
C!ass /Q^^ eSy 



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Copyright N .. 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



SPEAKING OF HOME 




II 



SPEAKING OF 
HOME 

BEING ESSAYS OF A 
CONTENTED WOMAN 

BY 
LILLIAN HART TRYON 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 

MCMXVI 




# 






COPYRIGHT, I915 AND 1916, BY THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY - LILLIAN HART TRYON 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published September iqib 




©CI.A437757 



CONTENTS 



I. On Being a Housewife 

II. On Keeping House by Ear 

III. Abolishing the Parlor 

IV. Wild Grapes for Jelly 

V. On Staying Late in the Coun- 
try 

VI. On Buying at the Door 
VII. Piazza Conversation 



VIII. The Conservation of 
ness .... 



IX. On Being too Kind 
X. Pussy-Cat, Pussy-Cat 
XI. Ragbags and Relics 
XII. On Being a Hostess 



Shabbi- 



1 
15 
31 

48 

59 
73 
92 

115 
131 
150 
168 
188 



SPEAKING OF H0 3IE 




I 

On Being a Housewife 

t would not be precisely 
true to say that the house- 
wife is out of fashion to- 
SHjday. Indeed, with all the 
aids to housekeeping worked out by 
modern science and sociological theory 
easily accessible, it is taken for granted 
that every woman manages her home 
in the same casual but thorough way 
in which she goes to church, knits, or 
plays bridge. By all means, compe- 
tence ! But as for enthusiasm? — that 
is another question. The wife and 
mother of these days is expected to be 
efficient in her housekeeping, as a matter 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

of course; but a little scornful of that 
efficiency, as though being a housewife 
were a minor incident in a varied and 
useful career. The only women who 
dare to say aloud that they like house- 
work, are those whose professions make 
it impossible for them to do any, no- 
tably actresses and singers. These, we 
learn through the indiscretions of their 
press agents, resort to the life domestic 
as a relaxation from sterner duties! 
We are even permitted to gaze upon 
them as, having served a dazzled world 
in their higher, public capacity, they 
toss a salad or season a curry for their 
friends. 

But for the woman in private life, 
the fashion of the hour is to "extenu- 
ate, conceal, adorn" the daily task. 
Science has provided the apparatus for 
making the drudgery of actual house- 



ON BEING A HOUSEWIFE 

work lighter. Woman herself has de- 
duced from these helps a gospel of eva- 
sion. If she can be spared some of the 
toil of her profession, why not all? 
Why not run the household upon a 
scheme of efficiency that will portion 
out the work among experts and spe- 
cialists? These are the specious sug- 
gestions of some who frankly say they 
were created for a higher mission than 
attending to the physical needs of their 
families, but who overlook the fact that 
physical needs are attended by meta- 
physical. Thus, at one end of the finan- 
cial scale, a woman, hating the hum- 
drum, and eager for the thing she knows 
as culture, mitigates her dish-washing 
with reading, her book propped up by 
dishes. At the other, she hands over 
her house to a professional house- 
keeper and becomes a virtual boarder, 

3 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

so as to have time for all the oppor- 
tunities for self-advancement that the 
city offers. There are desert wastes be- 
tween these extremes, of impersonally 
conducted households, where things 
move on wheels that seem to go, after 
a fashion, of themselves, in a cool dry 
monotony of routine efficiency; where 
the orderliness is stiff and impregnable, 
and where the menus are repeated. 

There are two difficulties with this 
very superior attitude. One is that it is 
Pharisaical. It regards all cheerfully 
domestic souls as inferior; and looks 
upon our great-grandmothers, whose 
homely qualities found activity enough 
in their own houses, with a condescen- 
sion little short of scorn. But those 
high-minded dames, at once delicate 
and vigorous, have left plenty of valued 
evidence of housewifely prowess: of 



ON BEING A HOUSEWIFE 

skill in handicraft, of taste in china and 
furniture, and of strong common sense 
in bringing up their families. If they 
were to speak for themselves, I can 
fancy that both scorn and pity would 
be cast back upon the generation of 
to-day. 

The other is, that it leaves out of the 
reckoning altogether the pleasures of 
being a housewife. I hasten to enroll 
myself among the unfashionable in this 
respect. Personally, I find it the most 
varied of occupations, the most human 
of trades, the most absorbing of pur- 
suits. I am not, I suppose, to be counted 
among the domestic women. I do not 
spring to the dish-pan with the zeal of 
the enthusiast, nor do I sing paeans of 
joy at the prospect of a morning's bak- 
ing. The New England woman made 
famous by Miss Wilkins, who loved a 

5 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

long straight seam to sew, I have great 
sympathy with; but family sewing is 
not all straight seam! Some things I 
am quite willing to do by proxy. It is 
the profession as a whole that appeals 
to me. 

If a housekeeper does not develop 
amazing versatility, it is not the fault 
of her work. When I hear of artists as 
being versatile, I think of the training 
I am getting, and wonder how much 
more practice I should need before I 
could be hailed as one of those bright 
stars. Sometimes I think it would be a 
rest to take the place of the lady who is 
billed to change her costume in one 
minute between scenes; for she has to 
be versatile only a few hours a day. 
The housewife's lightning changes are 
complete, taken for granted, and ever 
fresh and new. Either the changes are 

6 



ON BEING A HOUSEWIFE 

so abrupt that she does a kind of men- 
tal hopscotch, or the stir is so constant 
that her head seems to hold scrambled 
brains. 

However, I welcome those shifts of 
attention; they keep the mind alert 
and sympathies alive. Any comfortable 
sense of mastery one may have achieved 
in another profession, is suitably chas- 
tened by the variety of the ideal for the 
housewife. But in addition to these 
improving reasons, I find the variety 
in itself delightful. It is like going on 
a little journey, to drop one task and 
take up another of a different sort. The 
work that lately filled the horizon slips 
from view, and is for the hour forgot- 
ten. New faculties come in play with 
each change. Dexterous fingers, strong 
hand and arm, enduring back and legs, 
all take their turn for the house. 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

The intellectual demand is no less 
diverse. The plea of the evader that 
women were made for something better 
than home life does not hold here, since 
the opportunities are greater than any 
woman can live up to. For the modern 
wife and mother is presumably her hus- 
band's intelligent friend, and her chil- 
dren's playmate and guide. She is, 
consequently, expected to be a Person 
herself, and not a mirror. So her read- 
ing, small in quantity though it may, 
more often than not, have to be, ranges 
naturally enough from current events 
to nursery rhymes and adolescent psy- 
chology, touching whatever will be of 
service to her own inner life. Happy 
modern woman, whose study and re- 
flection, far from being a selfish indul- 
gence, are part of her housewifely duty ! 

One of the most exacting and amus- 



ON BEING A HOUSEWIFE 

ing intellectual tasks I have, as well as 
one of the most diversified, is the plan- 
ning of menus. Consider how one has 
to call upon information, taste, knowl- 
edge of human nature, in performing 
this bit of routine. I have got to assem- 
ble a series of meals, economical, 
digestible, intelligible, and persuasive; 
which will use up certain remnants 
agreeably, combine specific food values, 
tempt certain varying appetites; which 
will besides all this have a certain aes- 
thetic quality; and behind all that, will 
keep within fixed boundaries of cost. 
I am not so sure that it does not bring 
into use some spiritual qualities as well ! 
Certainly, a housewife is in a very 
human kind of business; she cannot 
escape from people. She has humanity 
in her own family, naively off its guard 
and defenseless ; humanity guarded and 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

wily, showing a crafty face at her door, 
to beg or to sell ; humanity at work for 
her in all its diversity. She learns to 
enjoy folks of every sort and in any con- 
dition. Many a good story comes to 
my house with a bargain in its hand, 
and I never turn it away unheard. I 
am afraid I might miss something; the 
truth or falsity of the story does not in 
the least affect the entertainment it 
gives me. So with the people who work 
for me; they make my handbook of 
applied philosophy. I have stored 
up more maxims from a shrewd, and 
thoughtful Scotchwoman who, through 
many ups and downs, and varied expe- 
riences with social workers, has yet 
managed to keep her independence, 
than from many a wiseacre book. And 
no wit between covers has ever made 
me laugh more spontaneously than an 



ON BEING A HOUSEWIFE 

unlettered Polish girl, who had a gift 
of sunny humor and trenchant phrase 
better than much learning. 

Much learning used to impose on the 
housewife, who had it not. But no 
longer does its swagger of superiority 
awe her. Having some knowledge her- 
self, she is prepared to count it as but 
one among the nobler gifts of mankind, 
no more worthy of honor than the en- 
dearing traits that make people inter- 
esting and reliable to live with. Sur- 
mising, from her wider experience, that 
as a nation we are prone to overesti- 
mate sheer brain-power, she lays her 
influence in the other side of the bal- 
ance, for the ethical qualities. 

But — the drudgery, they say. Yes, 
the drudgery! There is plenty of it, 
enough to discipline the most frivolous 
soul, even when all the aids to house- 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

work are installed and busy. And it is 
always there, waiting. It is inescapable, 
whether it be the drudgery of actually 
doing, or of administration and over- 
sight. Drudgery is a tool of the Devil 
of Discontent. Yet I say, why not? 
There is drudgery in every profession, 
though the kinds may differ; and there 
is little to choose between one kind 
and another. If I must drudge, let me 
drudge with my own things, for my 
own family, and in my own way ! 

They say, too, that housekeeping is a 
stay-at-home occupation. Well, and if 
it is, there are those who like to stay 
at home. It is pleasant to live in an 
environment of one's own making; to 
work amid quiet surroundings; to care 
for the sights that greet the eye when 
one stops to look. There are six fat 
pigeons nodding about on my neigh- 



ON BEING A HOUSEWIFE 

bor's lawn. Against the blue of the 
noonday sky, the elm branches throw 
their fretwork, growing filmy with 
leaf buds. Already the lilac hedge is 
dotted with tiny arrowheads of green. 
Inside the house, there is the feeling 
of familiarity, of association; and the 
sense of being a part of all life, — of 
somehow fitting into a place in the 
world's scheme. It is pleasant, too, to 
have the world brought to the door. 
Things come to my hands daily from 
the ends of the earth, to do with as I 
will. My daily labor of planning or 
executing transmutes the tropics into 
action, and makes the Orient's wealth 
of humble use. Am I less useful to 
humanity, in my turn, because my cho- 
sen profession keeps me at home, in- 
stead of sending me forth each day? 
At least, each day I prepare others to 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

go forth and be useful. Physical fitness 
and spiritual poise they must get at 
home. They need some one. I am 
humble. Their necessity gives me all 
the scope I need. 



II 




On Keeping House by Ear 

harles Lamb said he had 
no ear. Sometimes I am in- 
clined to think that none of 
us have, except for the ob- 



vious and conventional use of listening 
to music, and the purely utilitarian one 
of getting communications from the 
rest of the world. It is rather dull of us, 
considering that sounds and voices are 
as much a part of our environment as 
are forms and colors. Fortunately, 
however, cultivating "an ear" does 
not necessarily mean learning to play 
or sing. Some people cultivate theirs 
by sallying forth at awesome hours of 
the morning, with opera-glasses and 
bird-books. Though their looks belie 

i5 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

them, they go to listen. The songs that 
may have awakened them in many a 
spring dawn, they are only becoming 
aware of, by this painful process. But 
it is not necessary to get up so early, or 
to go so far afield. There is, as every 
one who lives in a house knows, enough 
noise at home ! In fact, the house is the 
very place to educate one's listening 
powers, because its sounds are so vari- 
ous, and at the same time, so familiar. 
It is more than a little amusing, for 
instance, and sometimes more than a 
little puzzling as well, to trace sounds 
to their sources. This makes listening a 
kind of game, in which guesswork is one 
of the chief elements. Sometimes mem- 
ory and association play tricks upon 
the ear. Things are not what they 
sound like; and you score one against 
yourself. But practice increases accu- 

16 



ON KEEPING HOUSE BY EAR 

racy, as well as keenness of hearing. I 
can imagine a housewife becoming so 
expert that she knows what sounds to 
listen to, and what to disregard, and 
can with some certainty account for 
unexpected noises. 

I am going to practice keeping house 
by ear. I have visions of tripled effi- 
ciency, when I shall become so perfect 
in the art, that I can read and knit, or 
darn, and at the same time follow the 
course of human events downstairs with 
sufficient exactness to interpolate warn- 
ings or encouragement at just the right 
minute. 

When for any reason I stay in one 
part of the house for a few days, I find 
the monotony of my surroundings con- 
siderably enlivened, so to speak, by 
my ears. Without leaving my room, I 
follow the household routine through 
17 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

the day, by turns guessing and criticiz- 
ing. Some mornings begin cheerfully, 
and some peevishly, as fretful slam or 
hearty clatter tell me. I know when the 
kitchen fire has kept well, and when it 
has not, by the sounds the range gives 
forth to its shaking-down and replen- 
ishment. The crackling of sticks tells a 
different story from the quieter snap- 
ping of coal. Preparations for breakfast 
come up to me, in my temporary re- 
moteness, as sound; though smell helps 
me to note the exact stage at any mo- 
ment. I feel sure an undue partiality is 
being accorded to the laying of the 
table, it is so long a-doing. The top is 
off the milk bottle at last; and I recog- 
nize the sounds of bread-knife and but- 
ter-crock. When will the cooking be- 
gin? Ah, the bacon-pan! It always 
strikes the edge of the shelf with just 



ON KEEPING HOUSE BY EAR 

that noise. The eggs are evidently to 
be fried, this morning; I hear them 
sputtering. There is a silence when 
they're boiled, and a scraping and stir- 
ring when they're scrambled, and a 
great fuss of egg-beater when they're 
getting ready for an omelet. 

The noise of the dishes is rather 
brisker at breakfast than at other 
meals; but conversationally consid- 
ered, it is a quiet occasion. Even at 
my distance from the table, I perceive 
the note of bracing for the day's ad- 
ventures in business, school, home, and 
society: the short, crisp question and 
answer, the alert tones, the unceremo- 
nious pauses. 

I do hate to hear dishes badly piled 

for washing. When spoons clank on 

bowls, and knives and forks mix up 

in heterogeneous fashion with china 

19 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

and tins, I have visions of nicks and 
scratches that make me want to de- 
scend in might, and rescue the helpless 
things from the hand of the spoiler. 
On the contrary, nothing in the work 
about the house gives me such a sense 
of housewifely comfort as the sounds of 
orderly procedure with the dishpan. It 
is a task both rhythmical and musical ; 
and there is a ring of finality when the 
pan is at length hung in place, that in- 
dicates the satisfactory completion of 
an act of the daily drama. 

Cooking by ear I do not altogether 
recommend as having any certain pros- 
pect of success, even when the hearing 
is keen with specialized practice. The 
ear does sometimes give warning in 
time to avert catastrophe, as, if one is 
near enough to hear it, in the case of the 
raucous bubbling of a kettle boiling dry ; 



ON KEEPING HOUSE BY EAR 

where the warning to the other senses 
would have come only when the mis- 
chief was done. By ear, also, one can 
tell almost to a stroke when cake or 
muffins have had beating enough. But 
there is no warning bell to announce 
the proportions that go into the mixing- 
bowl, and the oven has no voice to pro- 
claim its temperature. If I cannot be 
on the spot, and have a share in the 
pleasant alchemy of stirring together in 
a dish a lot of strange-looking powders 
and liquids, consigning them to the fire, 
and presently drawing forth, not what 
went in, but a something quite under- 
standable, savory of smell and appetiz- 
ing to behold, then I do not want to be 
responsible for making things turn out 
well. Directing, or even assisting, by 
ear, may not only bring a culinary dis- 
aster: it may be the cause of strained 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

relations with the member of the family 
who actually is on the spot. For in their 
cooking rights women are naturally 
jealous and exclusive, melodramatically 
demanding all, or nothing. 

It does not take a very wise house- 
wife, however, to know the sound of 
her own utensils. Even two or three 
rooms away, and occupied with other 
things, she names the noises from her 
kitchen, and pieces the information 
they give her into a logical sequence. 
True, one cannot identify a dessert by 
its sound, as one might a tree by its 
bark, or a flower by its scent. But a 
tolerably good guess can be ventured 
of the cook-book division under which 
it falls, based upon the combination 
and arrangement of the cooking-noises. 
Everything that can be called cake has 
one characteristic sound, — the quick, 



ON KEEPING HOUSE BY EAR 

regular beat of the spoon at the end of 
other variously arranged noises, suc- 
ceeded, after the breathless pause of 
filling the pans, by the irrevocable slam 
of the oven door. The rolling-pin, with 
its alternating raps and grumbles, be- 
trays the pie, unless the children have 
demanded cookies. As for custard, 
who that has ever known it can fail to 
recognize the peculiarly resonant stir- 
ring, the slip, slop, of a mixture at once 
thick and thin! The sounds of bread 
at the kneading are like nothing else 
that goes into an oven. With squeaks 
and sighs, the soft dough yields to the 
coaxing wrist, at once caressing and 
compelling; while a stiff dough makes a 
hard kneading, till the board gives and 
creaks under it like an old sleigh. Meat 
gives some sign of what is being done 
to it, by its hissing in broiler or oven, 

23 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

with a sudden crescendo when the door 
is opened. 

The sound of vegetables falling into 
the pot has an interrupted rhythm 
which is only in part due to variation 
in size, and largely to the preferences of 
the peeler. I believe nobody has ever 
peeled potatoes without choosing them, 
one after another, until no choice was 
left. Why this process of selection, 
when all must eventually be taken? 
But then, for that matter, why do we so 
often strongly prefer one utensil over 
another practically identical? I have 
known women to be annoyed to a point 
of helplessness because they had mis- 
laid a favorite kitchen knife. I long 
cherished a cracked mixing-bowl, and 
sat in dread, when I heard it used by 
others, for fear it might finally be 
done for; and with equal decision I dis- 

24 



ON KEEPING HOUSE BY EAR 

liked an unoffending, if unattractive, 
spoon of my kitchen collection, and re- 
joiced when it was taken out to the 
sand-pile and lost. 

When I am about the house, taking 
part in the work, I am of course con- 
scious, among other things, of the rhyth- 
mical qualities of housework. But when 
I stay apart from it, and listen to it, it 
comes to seem all rhythm, both in the 
larger sense of regular recurrence of 
tasks, and in the repetition of sounds 
with insistent ictus and pause. Ironing, 
for example, is nearly as pleasant to lis- 
ten to as to watch. Not by one stroke 
of the iron, but by many, is the linen 
polished and the cambric smoothed to 
a satin daintiness; the blows follow one 
another, now slowly, now fast, like the 
drum-beat of some strange march. 
There is rhythm in the kitchen ; rhythm 

25 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

in the dining-room ; and in all the work 
of setting the house in order. Even 
the vacuum cleaner has a pulse. This 
rhythmical quality of housework must 
be the reason why so many women 
hum or whistle about the house. Old 
hymns and sentimental songs seem to 
be the most popular for this time-beat- 
ing purpose ; and from the cheerfulness 
of voice with which the dreariest of 
sentiments are expressed, I suspect that 
the subject has less to do with the use 
of a tune, than its rhythmical adapta- 
bility to the deed of the moment. 

Most soothing of all household 
rhythms is the swish of the broom. It 
is gentle, and low-keyed. It takes my 
attention from other things, and makes 
me think of abstractions. I wonder 
whether there is not some mathemati- 
cal calculation by which a ratio can be 
26 



ON KEEPING HOUSE BY EAR 

established between power of stroke, 
length of arm, and good-will. And so 
speculating I sink into comfortable 
depths of nothingness. 

The voices of family and friends, 
when they drift to me from another 
part of the house, tell me a different 
story than if I were in the room with 
them. When I cannot hear words, or 
see faces, I find the voices themselves 
telling me secrets. There is a picture 
of temperamental condition in quality 
of tone, and of physical condition in 
its elasticity or drag. Vibrations and 
overtones even give some account of 
the intellectual qualities; and inflec- 
tions express attitudes of mind as well 
as words can. Facts, however, must 
be supplied by the imagination. I 
could invent high comedies and high 
tragedies from the sounds of voices 
27 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

that are very likely expressing the 
most prosaic of ideas! 

The house itself has voices, which 
speak most clearly in the quiet hours. 
Things have their individualities of 
sound, as well as of looks. The click of a 
latch, the light echo of a floor beneath a 
footstep, are enough to summon a vi- 
sion of the room from which they came, 
so different are they from any other 
grouping of noises in the house. Al- 
most as much might be said of the 
sound of any piece of furniture at being 
touched. How well one knows the 
cracking of each willow chair from that 
of all the others! Old furniture, I have 
a notion, has a mellow tone, like an old 
violin; while the new sounds sharp and 
clear. The house in its entirety is, in 
fact, resonant, like a big sea-shell. It 
gathers up individual sounds, and gives 
28 



ON KEEPING HOUSE BY EAR 

out a rich, composite murmur, which 
swells and subsides again as doors open 
and close. 

Accidental noises break in upon this 
peaceful harmony, never, no matter 
how persistent, making a part of it. 
The slamming of an unfastened shut- 
ter, the dripping of a carelessly turned 
faucet, are always obtrusive. I feel 
sorry for a house that is left alone, with 
anything to drip, or rattle, or otherwise 
disturb its quiet. Equally out of place 
are the sounds of things put to uses 
they were never intended for, like the 
anything not a hammer which serves a 
woman to drive a tack with. 

The feeling of home is made up of 
many elements; and the voice of the 
house is one of them. A small and quiet 
lady, whose journeys abroad had usu- 
ally been terminated with the going 
29 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

down of the sun, once went a-visiting, 
her courage all summoned for a week 
of sociability and sight-seeing. But she 
begged off, the morning of her second 
day. "The crickets made me home- 
sick," she tearfully explained; "they 
sound so different from the crickets at 
home!" Her ear was keen enough to 
tell her that the familiar sounds, with 
others, strange to her, in combination 
with them, made a wholly strange 
effect. 

Every house, in fact, is individual, 
from the hollow ring of the earth upon 
the path to its door, to the least of its 
noises within. I should know my own 
house, if I were brought to it from the 
uttermost parts, and set down in dark- 
ness. No other house, no matter how 
pleasant or how powerful its voice may 
be, sounds like home. 




Ill 

Abolishing the Parlor 

young farmer, sitting op- 
posite me in a city-bound 
trolley-car one morning, 
was discoursing to an ac- 
quaintance upon his new house. What 
he said, inevitably overheard above the 
bumping of the half-empty car, at first 
interested me less than the man him- 
self. I liked him for being so frankly a 
farmer of the old-fashioned type. He 
did not appear ashamed of the distinc- 
tion of an outdoor complexion and a 
country fashion of dress. His cheerful 
voice and rural accent sounded through 
the car whenever it stopped. Because 
of all this, I was, perhaps unwarrant- 
ably, startled to find that, when build- 

3i 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

ing was under discussion, at least, his 
ideas were of the most advanced. 

"On the bungalow style," he was 
saying, as one jolt brought a moment's 
silence; "and all the improvements. 
We swapped a sightly location for one 
on the lower road, where we get the 
water and gas from Woodfield; and I 
guess we shan't be sorry. We've got 
a house big enough for the children to 
grow up in, too. There's a reception 
hall, a living-room, and a den on the 
first floor, besides dining-room and 
kitchen." 

I heard no more. Now, some people, 
whether of city or country, fit perfectly 
into the "bungalow style" of house, 
with all it implies. But some do not. 
By all the arguments of suitability that 
man should have had a parlor and a 
sitting-room in his house. What could 

32 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

he do without them? I fancied him at 
his ease, sitting in a rocking-chair be- 
side a red-covered table with a hanging 
lamp above it. He would be out of his 
character in a living-room. It occurred 
to me that perhaps he could not find an 
architect to make him a sitting-room 
and a parlor; or had they built rooms 
of the old type, and rechristened them 
with new names? I wanted to look into 
his living-room and his den and his re- 
ception hall. Had he scattered his par- 
lor about in the three, or had he put it 
all into one? 

The country parlors of our grand- 
mothers' days would not have yielded 
so easily to a new-fashioned name. Par- 
lors they were, in every sense of the 
word. Little or big, they were stiff and 
stately rooms. Who that has known it 
will ever forget the aromatic and faintly 

33 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

musty draft that stole out when the 
door was opened, and the dim light that 
made mystery within? Once inside, 
there was the table with its lamp set in 
the midst of a tinted foam of crocheted 
mat, its books laid exactly across the 
corners, and its bits of ornament, each 
with a little family story that even the 
children knew. There were the slip- 
pery chairs and the sofa, whose stiff 
springs would not yield to the little 
weight of childhood, but sent us bounc- 
ing off; the secretary with its impor- 
tant air; the mantel adorned with a 
clock that only went on state occasions, 
and a pair of vases filled with everlast- 
ing and dried grasses. I know one such 
parlor that exerted a great influence on 
the children who crept in, breathless, 
to try the springs, and pull at the cords 
of the shades. They wondered afresh 

34 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

at each visit how the beads could have 
got onto the endless woolly chain of 
the mat; and gazed betwixt awe and 
mirth at the woodcuts of Meddlesome 
Matty suffering the punishments of her 
inquisitiveness. Dreadful warning to 
a child even then a-meddling! Plenty 
to look at and plenty to do, there: all 
the chairs to be sat on, pretending you 
were Somebody grown-up, the foot- 
stools to be pushed about, the checker- 
table to be tipped back and forth ; there 
were curious shells to rub bright, 
carved puzzles to work apart, pretty 
inlaid boxes, usually locked, to guess 
about, shake, and if possible, pry open. 
The pictures, wax flowers, and tidies, 
offered contemplative pleasures, but 
were, even to the youthful mind, docu- 
ments telling something of people, — 
perhaps in a roundabout way of oneself. 

35 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

When, on Sundays, and days of 
callers, and days of company to tea, the 
parlor was opened to the light and 
the air of the ordinary world, and the 
grown-ups came and went, and sat 
there talking about things you did n't 
understand, or perhaps, worse still, 
about yourselves, the parlor strangely 
lost its atmosphere of intimate interest 
and confidence, and turned into a mere 
unusual background, against which 
people you knew very well seemed un- 
familiar. Such elegant leisure! Such 
good clothes, fine manners, modu- 
lated voices ! Such lofty conversations ! 
Plainly, topics proper to working hours 
and working places were not proper 
here. If by chance they were touched 
upon, it was with a grand manner and 
an impersonal tone that gave them 
national significance. Privately, while 

36 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

I deplored the use of the parlor as a 
meeting place, I was thrilled by a 
greatness in my relatives, which in the 
commonplace intercourse of every day 
I had failed to recognize. To this day, 
I do not get them quite back into the 
perspective. When I recall them con- 
versing in my great-aunt's parlor, they 
seem larger than reality, as the vision 
of Creusa seemed to iEneas : — 

Nota maior imago. 

Through many changes of fashion in 
its decoration, a Sabbath-like aloofness 
from everyday affairs remained for 
years the essential quality of the parlor. 
You might have searched a long time in 
the parlors of the seventies and eighties 
without finding a stick of the old furni- 
ture. That had gone the way of worn- 
out furniture, to attics and storerooms, 
3 7 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

via bedroom and playroom. Indeed, 
plain wooden surfaces and spindle legs 
did not harmonize with the decorative 
scheme of a generation ago. Those 
parlors had an elegance and a gran- 
deur all their own. Walnut frames on 
steel engravings and mirrors on the 
gilded walls ; lace-covered windows out- 
lined with lambrequins of rep or plush, 
corded, tasseled, and fringed; rep or 
plush again on the "sets" of parlor fur- 
niture, unless the set was of stuffings and 
puffings covered with brocade ; carpets 
laid out in geometric patterns, or strewn 
with garlands; hassocks, and bronzes, 
and corner cabinets, and richly illus- 
trated volumes of standard history and 
poetry : all went toward striking awe to 
the hearts of very young folks, and 
making them feel their own insignifi- 
cance in the general plan of society. Yet 

38 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

some of us who dwell in living-rooms 
are not so young but that we remember 
what a setting these rooms were for 
childish parties, or for the more sedate 
festivities of their elders. They were as 
far away as ever from the daily life of 
the family, but they were, nevertheless, 
a pictorial presentment of the luxury 
and formality that were the social 
aspiration of the time. 

The change in the parlor from luxu- 
rious and formal to gay and friendly, 
was a step bound to be taken sooner or 
later. It was not, oddly enough, at first 
in the direction of beauty. It typified a 
social change toward ease and inti- 
macy. Women began to conceive of 
their parlors as having romantic possi- 
bilities of amusement that should be- 
guile family and friends thither in the 
evenings. That was the period of Yan- 
3 9 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

kee rococo, — of cozy corners and 
knick-knacks, of cat-tails and gridirons 
and milking-stools in places of honor. 

I can remember the bustling interest 
the matrons of our town awoke to, in 
their own and one another's parlors. 
Once the door was open, it seemed as if 
they could not let in light and color and 
jocundity enough. They "did fancy- 
work" for the parlor; they painted on 
china, if they could; they bought bright 
little pictures of pretty girls and jolly 
scenes for it. Everybody got to put in 
it, what everybody else was getting. It 
troubled none of them that her parlor 
was much like all the parlors she went 
into. In fact, there was a marvelous 
consensus of opinion in one particular 
year, as to "hand "-painted panels, 
and scarfs, and tidies. The roses on 
them might be pink or red, the holly- 

fio 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

hocks mixed or all of a color, but they 
were all grown in the same garden. This 
was due to the activities of a tousled 
lady calling herself an artist, who had 
canvassed the town for orders, and had 
succeeded in convincing each house- 
keeper that her own individual pref- 
erences in floral coloring and character 
should be set forth upon satin or muslin. 
The subsequent bursting into bloom of 
these adornments was greeted by them 
rather with laughter than with anger. 
They had a common ideal, but it was 
not for the display of any possession; 
they were rivals, but only in making 
their parlors livable rooms. 

We had just got the parlor happily 
domesticated, when the professional 
decorator appeared, with advice to sell. 
His advent marked an epoch for house- 
wives. Sometimes he did not even need 
4i 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

to go into the parlor, but merely stood 
in the doorway and said "Not wholly 
bad!" or, which was even worse, 
"M-h'm!" He might as well, from the 
effect he produced, have been the Red 
Queen saying, "Off with their heads!" 
Then began the procession to the gar- 
ret, with milking-stools and easels and 
gay scraps of needlework, and other 
articles that showed more of virtue 
than of vertu. Luckily, the things that 
had to go, were not, for the most part, 
expensive ; so that the Yankee sense of 
thrift was not shocked. It was some- 
times hinted, from one woman to an- 
other, that more had been banished 
than need have been; but the advice 
was paid for, and therefore to be fol- 
lowed. At all events, in the course of 
time, without too much upheaval of 
sentiment and tradition, the decorator 

42 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

achieved a few gem-like rooms; and 
gave the whole community the idea to 
work upon that there is some beauty in 
the absence of ugliness, and some in ju- 
dicious arrangement of things quite 
commonplace in themselves. When it 

was known that Mrs. L 's parlor was 

done in old rose, with a few water-color 
landscapes on the walls, and that Miss 

C 's contained her grandmother's 

rush-bottomed chairs, and some tint- 
ed photographs gathered in her trip 
abroad, other women took their courage 
in their hands, and began on their own 
responsibility the reform of the parlor. 
To satisfy these new aesthetic stan- 
dards, and at the same time retain the 
hardly achieved homelikeness, was a 
task not easy for minds unaccustomed 
to think of Home in terms of the higher 
beauty. So, there were many failures 

43 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

and some half-successes. There still 
are. No matter ; the thing accomplished 
was great. Whatever it was or was not, 
the parlor left off being merely a room 
in which to receive visitors, and be- 
came the expression of a family's com- 
posite character and taste. But even 
thus, when the parlor had reached the 
point of perfection, was it at last abol- 
ished completely; for who can have a 
room so expressive as these had be- 
come, and not want to live in it? 

We are fast becoming a parlorless 
nation. The accidental limitations of 
space and of service in modern life, and 
the increased expenses of building, as 
well as the noble intention of simplify- 
ing the house, have contributed to the 
result. The apartment house began the 
movement; the bungalow developed it. 
Even in houses where the rooms are 
44 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

plenty and large, there seems to be al- 
ways some more immediate use for 
every room than to make a parlor of it. 
So the parlor, which used to be the 
most important room, now is relegated 
to the cold and viewless side, or is 
crowded into a corner of the hall, with 
two chairs and a palm. 

We could not get our parlors back 
into their old state if we tried, because 
we ourselves have changed. The living- 
room answers to a new social feeling. 
Life is too full to have patience with 
formalities. The cry of the times seems 
to be for few friends and good ones. 
The living-room is an intimate apart- 
ment, where people are at ease with one 
another; the surroundings suggest talk 
that is neither superficial nor imper- 
sonal. Perhaps the finest thing about 
it is that it is the man's room, quite as 

45 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

much as the woman's. In this age of 
the feminist, man has come into his own 
at home. Thanks partly to the decora- 
tor, he no longer considers the arrange- 
ment of a room a woman's job. The 
parlor belonged to the women of a 
household. The men entered it under 
pressure, assuming for the occasion a 
festive air, and more often than not 
seeking an early pretext for escape. 
But in the living-room, the colors are 
soft, the lights are good, the chairs are 
easy, and there is nothing to pull or 
knock off on the floor. It is a back- 
ground that permits a man in his every- 
day moods to retain his self-respect. 

Nevertheless, there is a good deal of 
the parlor still left in our natures. The 
business of family life, which used to go 
on in the shabby sitting-room, is man- 
aged from some nook far away from the 

46 



ABOLISHING THE PARLOR 

living-room. That is a place for leisure. 
The little imp of logic suggests that 
when the parlor was turned into a liv- 
ing-room, then, by the same token, the 
living-room became a parlor. We take 
kindly to the customs of the living- 
room, because they follow the line of 
least resistance ; but we welcome oppor- 
tunities to practice there the graces of 
the more austere parlor. The parlor 
was a school of politeness and conver- 
sation; in the living-room we have 
manners, and talk, instead. When the 
living-room does the best service to 
this generation, it is not only the center 
of the family's social life; but it is, even 
as the parlor once was, a barrier of deli- 
cate reticence, hospitable and impal- 
pable but none the less real, shielding 
the sanctity of family intimacy from 
the rest of the world. 




IV 

Wild Grapes for Jelly 

saw them, among peaches 
and melons and early ap- 
ples, on the fruit stand of a 
Greek. They were set hum- 
bly at one side of the brilliant display 
— a straggly, leaf-strewn heap. Pyra- 
mids of domesticated fruits, with their 
tidy red-and-yellow glaze, put to shame 
those unkempt clusters, and tame 
grapes, packed so neatly in their fresh 
splint baskets, cast scorn upon them. 
I am always tempted, in the presence 
of such a show, to handle things, just to 
see if they are real. How can they be so 
beautiful, and still be good? I want to 
dent the waxy pears, that look as if 

48 



WILD GRAPES FOR JELLY 

they might have grown anywhere but 
on a tree in a breezy orchard, to squeeze 
the melons, and to rub the down off 
the too, too velvety peaches. But wild 
grapes are intractably themselves. No 
Greek apron can polish them beyond 
recognition, no undiscerning hand lay 
them in parallelograms. What coun- 
try boy's need for pocket-money, or 
what chance discovery of keen-eyed 
aliens, sends these shy fruits to a city 
market? I forgot the little sallies of the 
greedy hand, to hover about the corner 
where they lay. I sniffed their spicy 
fragrance, weighed a dusky bunch in 
my hand, picked off a long-legs scram- 
bling atop of the pile, and ended by 
transferring all I dared of it to my 
kitchen table. 

Now if I were to advise any one as to 
the best of all ways to make wild-grape 

49 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

jelly, I should say, begin by gathering 
the grapes yourself. This will give you 
a start in blossoming time, when you 
can locate your vineyard by its smell, 
for not all vines that look thrifty bear 
grapes. You will find occasion to pass 
that way now and then during the 
summer, to take a wary glance at those 
swelling balls of jade beneath the leaves, 
and to note whether any one else may 
be showing the same interest. At 
length comes a golden day, which your 
heightened consciousness tells you is 
the very time : while the sun is still hot 
in mid-heaven, but the wind blows cool 
against your cheek, with a touch of 
frost. And you go to bring in your crop. 
Perhaps you will make the expedition a 
little family festival, with provisions in 
baskets, and a book for the half -hour of 
rest; perhaps it will be a quiet morning 

5o 



WILD GRAPES FOR JELLY 

jaunt with a friend. In either case, the 
world is well lost, for the time. Lucky 
you, if that suspected some one has not 
watched your vineyard a little more 
closely than you, and snatched your 
booty away ! With what pride in your 
harvest do you come laden home! 
What a delighted superiority you then 
feel toward the scanty spoil in the mar- 
ket! 

The sense of intimacy with those 
grapes goes into your jelly-making, and 
even, in some mysterious way, into 
your jelly. It is all your own, from twig 
to table. For wild grapes are every 
man's harvest, choosing their own trel- 
lis of boundary fences and stone walls 
along the roadsides. They yield their 
riches to those who know them best and 
who most desire them. If you have 
found them, then it is you only for 

5i 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

whom they have ripened, a free gift of 
nature's bounty. 

Even though I had to gather my 
grapes from the fruit-stand, the jelly- 
making itself was a joy, from the mo- 
ment I turned the basket on its side, 
and watched the tiny woodland insects 
scurrying for cover, to the moment of 
pasting the labels on the glasses with 
"Wild" written particularly large and 
plain. It took me out of the house 
to half -forgotten country lanes; and 
brought me home again to visions 
of little Epicurean feasts I should plan 
for the discriminating, with wild-grape 
jelly as the crown — a dainty to stir the 
imagination as well as please the taste. 
And what pure, primary pleasures of 
eye, ear, nose, mouth, and fingers, they 
offered! The subtle play of colors in 
the dark globes, turning royally to pur- 

52 



WILD GRAPES FOR JELLY 

pie as they drained, their bloomy 
roundness and firmness, their perfume, 
like that of a sun-smitten vine, their 
sharp, wild taste, even remembered 
sounds, song of birds and hum of bees 
above the wild-grape tangle, these were 
the material of poetry as well as of 

jelly. 

Indeed, the preserving season is a 
kind of poetic bypath, enticing us from 
the housekeeper's daily routine. We 
gladly leave our well-trodden ways of 
menus and mending, calls and enter- 
taining, for the rainbow-hued, fragrant 
tasks that were begun for us with the 
spring, in orchards and sunny garden- 
ends. Our bypath is aesthetic, rather 
than utilitarian. Like the peaceful 
lanes where wild grapes grow, it leads 
us out of the prosy region of foregone 
conclusions into that of experiment 

53 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

and adventure. Preserving is always 
an experiment, and keeps the charm of 
novelty no matter how many well-filled 
shelves we have to our credit each sea- 
son ; for there is time between two sum- 
mers to forget a good deal about the 
behavior of fruits. 

The bypath takes us away from the 
world into the solitude of the kitchen, 
made orderly and vacant for our enter- 
prise. I know of no occupation of wo- 
men more conducive to reflection; it 
keeps the hands busy enough so that 
we cannot call ourselves idle, but not 
so busy that there are no good level 
stretches of waiting and musing. We 
stir, and skim, and strain, entertained 
meanwhile by the troop of little, unre- 
lated thoughts that dance unbidden 
through minds at ease. When at length 
we emerge from our secular retreat, it 

54 



WILD GRAPES FOR JELLY 

is with ideas refreshed, opinions read- 
justed, provision made for the future, 
and fruit-stained hands that are rather 
a cause of pride than otherwise. 

Our families undertake their share 
in the autumnal industry with phil- 
osophy, if not with enthusiasm. Pru- 
dent eyes on the future, they accept 
resignedly their sketchy desserts of 
preserving-days, and show as much in- 
terest in the important affairs under 
way as can be expected of the uniniti- 
ated. They pass judgment gravely on 
the flavor of the fruit, with frequent 
consultation of the pile, at imminent 
risk to our carefully considered pro- 
portions. They even bend brows wont 
to frown over more weighty matters 
upon the little mechanical problems 
of the occasion. After lively discus- 
sion, marked by the pleasing frank- 

55 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

ness of expression permitted among 
relatives, they produce some contri- 
vance fearfully and wonderfully made, 
but wholly adequate to the moment's 
need. There is, for example, the tick- 
lish business of "dripping," which the 
cook-books nonchalantly dismiss with 
the words, "Let drip." Though, being 
limited by lack of experience, they can- 
not see why squeezing is not just as ef- 
fectual as dripping, and much quicker, 
they are willing to be indulgent to the 
feminine whim. But the jelly-bag is big 
and wet, and not every house is en- 
dowed with a hook in the middle of the 
kitchen ceiling. Some kind of sling is 
essential. The solution of the difficulty 
is a subject for the masculine intelli- 
gence ; and the results are individual in 
every household. In one, it may be the 
crane in the old fireplace that answers 

56 



WILD GRAPES FOR JELLY 

for the sling. In another, an old-fash- 
ioned washstand with a hole in the top 
is turned into a dripping-machine. In 
still another, an ingenious pulley de- 
vice is fastened to the waterpipes that 
cross the kitchen ceiling, and the bulky 
bag of juice hung therefrom. 

Modernism scarcely approves of all 
this labor. We cannot suppress a 
doubt as to the economy of expending 
so much time and care to catch and 
imprison a few dozen jars of sunshine. 
In theory, we acknowledge the waste- 
fulness of our effort. We might, per- 
haps with advantage to the world, be 
spared this labor and put to some other 
that somebody thinks more useful. But 
in practice, a great many of us go on 
preserving, year after year. In fact, 
we really love the close boundaries of 
home, and prefer the work that is direct 
5 7 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

and personal to a bigger work and a 
possibly posthumous appreciation. 

After all, we but take our place in the 
long line of women who, since cooking 
was invented, have gathered the fruits 
of the earth and stored them up for use 
and comfort. Each year with the ripen- 
ing of the fruit has this ritual been ac- 
complished, through ages of unwritten 
history. It is the hereditary harvest 
ceremonial of womankind, as old as the 
legend of Pomona. Its incense is the 
savory smell that floats out upon the 
soft autumnal air, from the kitchens of 
cottage, apartment-house, and palace. 




V 

On Staying Late in the Country 

n the spring, Cousin Jane 
declares that nothing will 
induce her to remain away 
from town later than the 
middle of September; and every fall she 
offers a new and quite sufficient reason 
for changing her mind. This year she 
cheerfully admits having no reason at 
all, but she means to stay, just the 
same. Her letter announcing the fam- 
ily decision, which is, in fact, her own, 
contains, nevertheless, some sugges- 
tive explanations. 

"We shall probably not move back 
to town till November, though as in- 
dividuals you may see us earlier, hurry- 
ing to or from a train. Don't ask me 
5 9 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

why! I'm sure I don't know; we have 
had so many good reasons, year after 
year, that one will do as well as another. 
We have stayed for the autumn colors, 
the autumn weather, for somebody's 
health, for the garden, — and really it is 
too bad to leave everything just crying 
to be eaten, when it has been so much 
trouble to raise! Sally says that we 
stayed last year, so far as she could 
see, for a peck of pickles and a gallon of 
jelly! The truth is, we are staying be- 
cause we hate to leave, though I sup- 
pose we shall all be homesick, as usual. 
Besides, we want to do some things to 
the house." 

Cousin Jane's actual reason appeared 
in her last sentence. She is always 
"doing something " to that house. Hers 
is not one of the big establishments, 
where season is a mere incident, and 
60 



A LONG SEASON 

arrivals and departures depend on cir- 
cumstances more mundane than spring 
or fall weather. It is a modest, though 
substantial, summer home, an old 
house of the kind that takes at least 
two weeks to put in running order, and 
as long to close up again, and demands 
a certain amount of sympathetic atten- 
tion all through the summer. Like 
many another woman, Cousin Jane 
really enjoys the bustle of packing and 
unpacking, of leaving one house and 
settling in the other; and she is equally 
happy when meeting the little emer- 
gencies of keeping house in the coun- 
try. Every year she prolongs the proc- 
ess of getting ready to leave, by some 
experiment in repair or rearrangement, 
which she undertakes after summer 
has been successfully carried through. 
Yet even Cousin Jane has, the least 

61 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

bit in the world, the air of a martyr in 
her devotion. Nobody has urged her 
to stay against her will ; but she writes 
of her plans with an air of conscious 
and resigned virtue. I have noticed the 
same air in many who prolong their 
summer into fall. They elect to re- 
main with Nature as long as Nature is 
hospitable ; but they wish to count their 
remaining a virtue rather than a privi- 
lege. Like those tragic young persons 
of Romance, who, having committed 
themselves to a course of action, stand 
nobly by their word, though they 
would have preferred, after all, to do 
something different, they rather expect 
to be admired for their constancy in 
abnegation. I imagine that we are all 
subject to a seesaw of emotions when 
we stay in the country late, even the 
most rural-minded of us! We pay 
62 



A LONG SEASON 

for our companionship with Nature in 
our isolation from our kind. Our proud 
sense of proprietorship in the autumnal 
glories of our particular countryside is 
offset by recurrent longings for the 
paved ways, familiar faces, and the 
smart autumnal crowds of the city. 
Rapture may be our daily portion ; but 
despair follows on the heels of the dusk, 
when the long blank evening shuts 
in with equinoctial swiftness. We are 
glad of the brief escape from routine, 
the summer programme having ended, 
and the winter not yet begun ; but our 
very liberty from engagements some- 
times leads us into the arduous busi- 
ness of "killing time." 

There is enough to do in the country 
in autumn, but the occupations are not 
those of the summer resident, nor are 
the events of any social interest. They 

63 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

have to do with crops and feeds and 
animals, with questions of drainage and 
of wood-cutting. The great out-of- 
doors is hospitable to its summer col- 
onists; it takes on an air of elegance 
and ease for them, lending itself as a 
background for their pleasures, and a 
source of inspiration in their thinking. 
But when they take wing for town, the 
country relapses again into its bucolic 
aspect. The quiet, earnest struggle with 
the earth for a living, which goes 0:1 
relentlessly all the year, gives to Na- 
ture again her expression of intensity 
and long patience. Almost the only 
reminder of the joyous activities of the 
summer is their setting of landscape 
and garden and house — in their turn, 
it is to be hoped, an inspiration of 
beauty in living to the country dwell- 
ers. Those who tarry behind must 
64 



A LONG SEASON 

needs seek new ways of enjoyment; 
they do well if they learn from their 
country neighbors to make much of 
small occasions. Errands offer such 
occasions, whether they require a visit 
to a nearby farmyard, or a journey to 
the next village. So do those long, 
unexciting expeditions, which no one 
will undertake in summer, when the 
days are filled with plans and people. 
The object of errand or expedition 
is nothing; the road offers much. The 
hub-to-hub conversation in the middle 
of the highway has added pleasure be- 
cause you know that in town you would 
be asked by the police to move on ; you 
put extra vigor into your shouts of 
cheerful repartee to the man who hails 
you across half an acre of field, because 
in town the conventionalities would 
keep you dumb. The call which awhile 

65 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

ago you willingly made brief, lengthens 
out into a visit, as you listen to local 
legends, set forth, it may be, with bit- 
ing humor, or with a power of laconic 
description that you envy. Along your 
journey you find the landscape has a 
charm of strangeness, no matter how 
often you may have seen it before; 
since last you took that road, the au- 
tumn, advancing, has changed the 
colors and masses along the forest's 
edge; little freshets caused by recent 
rains have spread a lake where not long 
ago a green meadow lay, and have 
poured brooks across the road for your 
wheels to splash through. You are 
thrilled with human sympathy at the 
signs of an access of thrift in a poor 
neighborhood : the rubbish cleared from 
sheds and dooryards, sagging porches 
braced, windows mended, — indica- 

66 



A LONG SEASON 

tions perhaps that the young people 
have developed a desire to live well. 
These are slight incidents, but an after- 
noon spent thus makes you forget that 
you ever had a consciousness. 

It is for this reason, I suppose, that 
Cousin Jane finds such delight in her 
autumn errands. She drives an am- 
bling horse which she cannot be per- 
suaded to give up, because, she says, he 
is good for her nerves; and it takes 
a very small pretext to constitute an 
errand. What she brings back in the 
way of comment, friendly gossip, and 
lively little anecdotes, is, it is plain to 
see, the plunder she most values. She 
finds an interested audience in her fam- 
ily, who banter her about the length of 
her excursions and the worth of her 
booty, but would n't for worlds miss 
one of her recitals. 
6 7 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

The human value of the country is 
not clear to those who come and go in 
the high tide of summer. They take 
their human relations along with them, 
or find them in others like themselves. 
Summer doings preclude learning much 
about rural neighbors. People at work 
about their farms easily seem to be a 
part of the landscape, like the figures 
of Corot, perhaps, never to be known. 
But when summer is over, they appear 
as beings at once less picturesque and 
more real. 

Clothes and attitudes do not dig, 
and gather, and bind into sheaves, 
after all, but men. They are ignorant 
of the intellectual catchwords of the 
hour in town, but they have a stand- 
ard of mental capacity which disre- 
gards advantages and is curious about 
power: the old Yankee standard which 

68 



A LONG SEASON 

sent meagerly educated men out into 
great positions, because their power 
was great. Their fiery pride of de- 
mocracy being met with respect, they 
have much to communicate that will 
stir the best of the social emotions. 

But Nature is your bosom compan- 
ion. People you can find in town. If 
you stay late in the country, it must 
be because you love the fall, the most 
various of the seasons. In no two years 
does autumn stain her garments with 
the same dyes; and each new coloring 
seems better than all the others. Each, 
too, reveals a different quality in lines 
of trees and contours of hills ; while the 
blue air through which they shine seems 
to be the air of another life than this. 
The fascination leads you on with the 
certainty of some new mood of beauty 
each day, and the hope of learning from 
69 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

the autumn some new strength of si- 
lent purpose. 

The paramount question, as the sea- 
son waxes late, is the question of the 
frost. This is the universal topic of the 
farms in autumn, just as the produc- 
tion of somebody's new play is the talk 
of the town. Speculation is rife, alma- 
nacs are quoted, comparisons made 
with previous years, clouds and winds 
are viewed with boding eye. Gardens 
are scanned with care each evening; and 
if the wind is cool, and light, and north- 
west, and the sky clear, everything that 
is ripe, or nearly ripe, goes into the 
basket. Then, what feasts for a vege- 
tarian! No need of meat imitations, 
while the frost holds off! Denizens of 
the well-supplied town, whose chief 
acquaintance with vegetables has been 
concerned with the proper dressing to 
70 



A LONG SEASON 

be served with them, become students 
of vegetable habits, in late October. 
The member of the family who will 
take the trouble to protect the still 
bearing plants, where he can, with a 
light covering, and thus save the fruit 
for its proper destiny, becomes the fam- 
ily hero. In the prospect of imminent 
cold weather, the flower garden, too, 
acquires a novel interest. Flowers so 
common in summer that they are 
scarcely noticed except in the mass, are 
studied as treasured individual blos- 
soms; a rosebud is a family event. 

As days grow short, and crickets 
chirp more rustily, and branches be- 
gin to show through the leaves, your 
thoughts center again around the house 
itself. It becomes, for the first time in a 
year, the subject of family conversa- 
tions, — what you must do to it, what 
71 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

you can do, what you could do if you 
could afford it. The history of the house 
comes out, as explaining this or that 
idiosyncrasy in its plan. You discover 
that it will take kindly to some changes, 
while others it will not tolerate. 

You come to feel that houses are, 
after all, much like people. Some are 
mellow, peaceful, easy to live with, 
and taking kindly to the furniture and 
manners of their inhabitants. Others 
are stubborn and reserved, yielding 
only to persistent effort to understand 
them, but showing at last a wayward 
and original charm. All houses are 
blank to those who do not like them. 
No expense or elaboration will give 
them any expressiveness. But no one 
who stays late in the country can fail 
to love his house. If he did not love 
it, he would flee to town! 



VI 




On Buying at the Door 

here are still, happily, some 
engaging foibles left for the 
diversion of humanity. We 
are not yet educated beyond 
our inconsistencies. When at last we 
do become altogether reasonable be- 
ings, half the fun of living for most of 
us will be gone. The personal equation, 
which now amuses and bothers us by 
turns, will be solved; our little vagaries, 
through which we give and get many 
joyous minutes, will be no more. Noth- 
ing will be left for us but to be tiresome 
creatures, stupidly efficient and unhu- 
morously correct. 

A pleasing incongruity in modern 
life, showing that as yet we are neither 
73 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

correct nor efficient to any alarming 
degree, is the presence of the peddler. 
By all sociological theory and economic 
law, he should be discouraged from in- 
terrupting the peace of household rou- 
tine, and gently persuaded to adopt 
some productive occupation. Yet here 
he is, in proof that buying at the door 
has survived a certain amount of rea- 
sonableness. Progress has not availed 
against him. He has changed his dress 
and his wares, but he remains eternally 
the same. The man who utters solemn 
warnings upon the scorner of his dust- 
less mop is own brother to that woman 
peddler of Cumse, who cursed Tarquin 
because he haggled over the price of the 
Sibylline books. 

In days of old, the peddler was a pic- 
turesque and even a romantic figure. 
Across the pages of classic myth and 

74 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

Oriental tale, through the labyrinths of 
medieval intrigue and the thrills of 
modern melodrama, he has passed, 
sometimes himself the hero, sometimes 
bearing a tale or a message along with 
his goods. He was a guest not without 
honor, and an imposing personage as he 
sat at ease, commanding his slaves to 
spread rugs and unroll silks. He had 
entertainment for empty heads, as well 
as bargains in the superfluous for full 
purses. But the ten-cent store and the 
trolley-car have conspired to diminish 
his importance and cut down his prof- 
its. The glory has vanished from the 
trade. The peddler now travels hum- 
bly and unattended; but his nature is 
as optimistic and his conversation as 
grandiloquent as ever. With a little 
tact and patience you may still buy a 
story along with your bargain. 

75 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

The gay tin-cart has vanished from 
city and town; the photographer's little 
house on wheels is no longer a summer- 
time lure for the young at the edge of 
the village. But if you go into the coun- 
try far enough from a railway station 
or a trolley line, you may see both these 
and many a snug little wagon besides. 
There is still need of the peddler in 
these quiet byways. Travel such a road 
along a ridge I know, on a morning of 
early summer, and you may find it a 
busy shopping street. Groups of little 
houses cluster along its green edges, like 
flowers in a garland. At intervals, dust- 
golden ribbons of roads trail down to 
the valley below. And up each road as 
you come to it, creaks a cart or climbs 
a man. In the distance a tall red cart 
approaches at leisurely pace; it sways 
slightly, and mirror-gleams flash out 
7 6 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

from it upon the countryside, in moving 
spots of light; a moment more, and you 
catch the familiar musical jangle, as the 
tin-peddler halts before a house. Here, 
you pass a brown young fellow trudg- 
ing merrily, with a bundle of rugs upon 
his shoulder. No Orientals these, but, 
from the glimpse you get of a rosy 
wreath and the mild head of a St. Ber- 
nard, gay and serviceable "Smyrna!" 
A pair of gypsy women stride along 
swinging armfuls of little bright-col- 
ored baskets. All kinds of things are for 
sale along the ridge road this morning. 
At a garden's end before a tiny house, a 
woman holds up to the sunlight a piece 
of gingham, while the proprietor of the 
wayfaring dry-goods shop is half hid- 
den from view under the flap of his 
wagon. The meat-cart and the fish- 
cart, men with neat small bags and men 

77 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

with unwieldy bundles, all are finding 
customers. As you muse upon the sight, 
you reflect that these peddlers are car- 
riers of more than their wares. They 
carry subjects for neighborhood talk, 
matter for comparison and debate, new 
ideas of decoration and equipment. 
The road stretches away for miles ; but 
the automobile whirls you on so fast 
that the whole long breeze-swept ridge, 
bordered on one hand by wooded high- 
land and on the other by sun-warmed 
valley, melts into one panorama of the 
housewife and the peddler. 

After all, the situation is not so widely 
different, in towns. The city housewife 
has her regular back-door visitors, with 
whom she holds daily intimate con- 
verse. But, be it distinctly understood, 
this is a very modern kind of buying at 
the door! The regular visitor has a 
7 8 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

standing; he is the agent of a reputable 
firm; he comes with an order-book, in- 
stead of a bundle. His admission is un- 
questioned; his sales are sure. He lit- 
erally brings the market to the house. 
Yet, in spite of the air of regularity 
given to the transaction, the housewife 
is just as susceptible as her country 
sister to the beguilements of the crea- 
tive imagination shown by her ped- 
dlers, although to mere moral suasion 
she may be somewhat more obdurate. 
How there can be a difference between 
lettuce and " let-tuce! " is a delicate psy- 
chological question; but the housewife 
can measure the difference by her 
grocer's bills. 

Peddlers' packs have changed with 
times and places. The bags and bun- 
dles brought to the city door contain 
other merchandise than those along the 

79 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

country road. In neighborhoods po- 
litely known as "residential sections," 
doggy rugs are no longer urged upon 
you, nor hair "restorers," nor liniment 
"good for man and beast," though there 
are doubtless still customers some- 
where for these commodities. China 
cement and silver polish, those staples 
of a former generation of peddlers, have 
been superseded by dustless dusters 
and patent-applied-for kitchenware, 
the staples of this. We might infer that 
the peddler finds us more intelligent 
and less credulous than our predeces- 
sors, were it not for the fact that the 
dustless dusters usually turn out to be 
far from dustless, and the kitchenware 
not what it seems ! 

If every woman sooner or later falls 
before the peddler and his pack, in spite 
of stern household rules and fixed prin- 
80 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

ciples, it is largely because of the pack 
itself. The feminine soul loves a bun- 
dle only next to a bargain : because it is 
neat, because it was made to be un- 
done, because its uncommunicative ex- 
terior is fuel to the flame of curiosity. 
Very likely disappointment lurks in- 
side. I have known most promising 
packages that held the dullest of things. 
But there may be amusement, or better 
than that. At any rate a bundle cries 
out to be looked into, even when she 
has bought it herself. And then the 
mere arrangement of the peddler's mer- 
chandise is interesting. The something 
childlike in her takes pleasure in those 
tidily fitted rows and tiers of packets, 
and the neatly folded layers on layers 
of stuffs. Sometimes she is tempted to 
buy, just to repay all that trouble of un- 
packing and displaying. 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

The merchandise of the peddler is 
not like that spread out on a counter, 
with a trade name and a fixed price 
writ large above it. It is brought to 
her, and sues for her favor; she does 
not go to buy it because it is what she 
must have. If she buys, she is invest- 
ing in a bit of mystery. She takes it at 
its boasted valuation, and chooses to 
think it cheap if she lowers the origi- 
nal price set upon it, willing to let to- 
morrow tell her whether she has been 
cheated. Meantime, she is ready to 
defend her purchase hotly against mas- 
culine jeers and family queries, for it 
is the visible witness to her judgment 
of a face and a story. 

The peddler exercises his judgment 
no less. With ready tact he adapts his 
persuasion to her apparent worldly con- 
dition, intelligence, and good nature. 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

Buyer, peddler, and bargain thus form 
a dramatic triangle, with the doorway 
for stage setting. Here, if ever, is a 
contest of pure native wit, divested of 
all adventitious circumstances. What 
though there is superior information in- 
side the door? It is offset by Odyssean 
craft across the threshold. On one 
hand, dignity, security, taste, and a 
generally sympathetic attitude toward 
human endeavors, somewhat lessened 
by suspicion and annoyance in particu- 
lar cases; on the other, a store of argu- 
ments and tricks of the trade, a vast 
doorway knowledge of feminine na- 
ture, and, most potent of all, the nip of 
the necessity to sell. The balance of 
qualities is usually good enough to keep 
the result in question up to the final 
moment ; and whatever that result may 
be, both sides feel a kind of satisfaction 

83 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

in having used their powers against a 
worthy opponent. 

Part of the peddler's cleverness con- 
sists in his ability to arouse attention. 
The peddlers are few who have faith 
enough in their wares to rely altogether 
upon them for success. They give 
plenty of reasons why you should buy, 
which have nothing to do with the qual- 
ity of the merchandise. As bits of per- 
sonal history, these reasons would be 
interesting enough, if the same story 
did not have to serve so many people. 
In the last analysis, all the stories of the 
trade reduce themselves to variants of 
four myths. 

There is the story of genius unrecog- 
nized and talent lost to the world for 
lack of capital. The man who "makes 
with his own hand" the little contriv- 
ance he thrusts upon you, seems, and 

84 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

perhaps is, perfectly honest. But you 
listen to an already familiar tale of the 
uncertainty of royalties and the faith- 
lessness of merchants; and in addition, 
you are expected to find an extraordi- 
nary merit in the thing because his 
hands have made it. Was not this pre- 
cisely the order of exercises when the 
vender of salve or cough-mixture called, 
in the days before little mechanical util- 
ities had caught the public eye? I do 
not know how many bits of twisted 
copper wire have been shown me the 
past year, convertible into how many 
utensils, for what varied uses. Most of 
these I have been fortified to resist; 
one or two I bought, for no reason that 
I can recall, except Lady Cicely's in 
"Captain Brassbound's Conversion," 
that the man had a nice face ! 

The peddler from foreign parts, with 

85 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

his plethoric telescope bag, which he 
has, presumably, carried all the way, 
and with a dirty letter from a mission- 
ary school for reference, is getting his 
living, not from his goods, which are 
commonplace, but out of his romantic 
circumstances. The man from "Dah- 
mahs-koos" gravely asserts that all the 
things he has are the work of a mother, 
wife and sister at home. Mexican and 
East Indian tell a like tale, with garnish- 
ings of local color from actual experi- 
ence. So do the little Irish girls with 
lace. Another plea of the same sort is 
the appeal of the disappointed Italian 
immigrant who wishes to go home by a 
boat "leaving to-night," and who will 
therefore sacrifice his last piece of real 
hand-woven linen at a great reduction. 
Not at all abashed if you meet him 
again days afterward, he will tell you, 

86 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

when reminded of his burning desire to 
leave these shores, that he lost the boat! 
The goods really do credit to some- 
body's intelligence. I have seen the 
same stuff in Capri; but the story did 
not work well there. All, of alien 
tongues, at crucial moments of ques- 
tioning, take refuge in an ignorance of 
English as colossal as it is sudden. 
Though they are only too obviously 
frauds, you feel kindly toward them, 
because they are so frank — with their 
feelings — and so free — with their 
nods and becks and wreathed smiles. 

When boys and girls selling their way 
through college offer you something 
you either have already or do not want 
at all, you are willing to put your name 
down in their businesslike little books, 
for the pleasure of watching the light 
in the young faces, as they find them- 
8 7 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

selves a step nearer the halls of learn- 
ing. It is with a shock that you finally 
realize how little difference there is be- 
tween them and the cripple who begs 
you to buy a bunch of pencils for char- 
ity's sake. 

Flimsiest of all peddler's stories is 
that told by the peddler with a grand 
manner. He has your name on a very 
select list of patrons to whom this su- 
perior grade of goods, or this special 
edition, may be shown in the confi- 
dence that your taste and culture will 
approve. Who but the sternest of Puri- 
tans might not feel that here was a man 
of judgment, to whom one might listen 
without fear of guile ! Yet the bargain 
from one of these transactions is small 
out of all proportion with the import- 
ance given it. 

One sometimes wonders whether 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

peddling is a profession, or a stepping- 
stone, or a stop-gap. Do men ever 
choose it, out of all the trades open to 
them? Or do they drop into it, as Silas 
Wegg dropped into poetry, when noth- 
ing more exciting offers? To go about 
the country reversing the economic or- 
der and creating a demand for your 
supply of unnecessities, is, I fancy, not 
really to the liking of many men. It 
suffices; it might even become an ab- 
sorbing occupation, to levy contribu- 
tions for your support upon your fellow 
beings, and manage to make them feel 
happy about it! 

Now, anybody can understand lik- 
ing to be a tin-peddler, or a scissors- 
grinder, or an umbrella-mender, or the 
popcorn man. These are independent 
tradesmen; they fill a real want. They 
are humanly interesting and trust- 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

worthy, because they have a real trade, 
and they ply it under the windows. But 
here is where a little originality will go a 
long way toward success: the scissors- 
grinder whose outfit is so complete that 
he can pull out his stool and sit down at 
his wheel in comfort; the pedestrian 
cobbler, who carries his patrons' shoes 
by the strings, dangling them above the 
pavements they have been wont to 
stamp or trip or shuffle along; the man 
who brings you, every Tuesday, potato 
chips and peppermints and horseradish 
for your delectation, and who talks to 
you like a naturalist and a moralist in 
one — does he read his Thoreau I 
wonder? 

The most idyllic peddler in fiction is 

perhaps Hardy's reddleman. The most 

idyllic I ever knew was an Englishman, 

too, an umbrella-mender who sang a 

90 



ON BUYING AT THE DOOR 

little song of his trade as he went his 
way. We could not resist that tune; 
and he would set up his stool in the gar- 
den path. As he worked in the check- 
ered sunshine, he would sing some old 
English ballad, while the children hung 
about him, all eyes and cars. That ped- 
dler and man added something to the 
homely poetry of life; and I hope he 
knew it. 






VII 

Piazza Conversation 

igjgis for me, in summer-time 
fjgive me a piazza nook, with 
a bit of a breeze, and a bit 
of shaded sunlight, a bit of 
a view, and a bit of idle-work; above 
all, a bit — not too much ! — of com- 
pany ; and you may know where to find 
me. Parties, games, even automobiles, 
can scarcely drag me from my para- 
disaical corner. What is better than 
to feel the cooling wing of a breeze on 
a warm morning, bringing a breath of 
sweetness across fields and gardens? 
Or prettier to see than the swift shadow 
of a bird crossing the streak of sunshine 
on the floor, and the bright quivering 
of sun-warmed air above the meadow 
92 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

grasses? What more quieting to the 
task-worn soul than a glimpse of blue 
hill or purple-shadowed grove, or of the 
meeting of rock and sea? Let me share 
these delights, to make them better 
still; and let us have talk blown hither 
and yon as light as the breeze, and as 
trifling as the insects that hum in the 
neighboring hedge. 

An empty piazza is a sorry sight. It 
seems to need the stir and animation of 
sociability, to make it complete as a 
place of recreation. Perhaps this is be- 
cause we have been addicted, as a na- 
tion, to the front-piazza idea; to such 
an extent, indeed, that even although 
the living-porch, with its approxima- 
tion to indoor habits, has become an 
integral part of the modern house, and 
despite the fact that the old front pi- 
azza is trying as hard as it can to be a 
93 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

living-porch, and succeeding tolerably 
well, we have not forgotten the ways of 
the light-hearted and light-clad group 
that used to take possession in the long 
summer twilights, or the conversation 
emanating from the row of rocking- 
chairs there, on a warm afternoon. 

Whatever name it goes by, and the 
names are many, the piazza has an 
amphibious character. It is neither in 
nor out, but on the border-line be- 
tween the two, with the intimate priv- 
acy of the house on one side, and the 
cheerful publicity of out-of-doors on 
the other; having a little of the quality 
of each, without quite achieving either. 
Though the piazza seems the ideal place 
for confidences, any one who makes 
them is tolerably sure of being over- 
heard. On the piazza you have, to be 
sure, many of the advantages of being 
94 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

outdoors and in at the same time; yet 
you cannot work there, in any sense 
that the really industrious approve, or 
play, at any of the healthful and ex- 
hausting games which are traditionally 
known as "exercise in the open air." 
You really are playing, although you 
satisfy your indoor conscience with a 
semblance of industry, or at the least, 
of sociability. If you have any reason 
for concealing the truth about your in- 
dolence, you can make the piazza a 
perfectly good excuse for idling or tri- 
fling to your heart's content, because it 
looks so irreproachable. 

Its atmosphere, likewise, is not clear, 
but changeable, and efforts fail to bring 
the spirit of the place to declare itself. 
The conversation of the piazza has this 
ambiguous and fragmentary quality. 
It need have no beginning, and it does 
95 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

not matter whether it ends, or merely 
drops off into silence. You start a large 
subject with the comfortable feeling 
that since there is no time to say any- 
thing final about it before you all go 
your devious ways, one thing will do as 
well as another; and so you offer the 
first generalization that pops to your 
lips. Let the talk thereupon meander 
where it will, even through intermi- 
nable flatness, you feel no personal re- 
sponsibility, and no need to change its 
direction. The sweet philosophy of let- 
ting things go, is the only guide in 
piazza talk. If, on the other hand, the 
talk is made up of shreds and patches, 
no one interferes to hold it together, 
for no one talks or listens with a view 
to keeping on with any topic. The 
transit of the Jones family across the 
path of vision from the piazza may give 
96 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

rise to a collection of comments that 
appear to have no more to do with each 
other than they have with the Jones 
family. - 

"That automobile is an ice-wagon!" 
says one. 

"They're going to have a new one, 
anyway," says another. "I saw Mrs. 
Jones at the Browns' tea, the other day. 
She is dressing especially well, this sea- 
son." 

"The Effort cars always wheeze, 
climbing a hill. I would n't take one as 
a gift." 

" I understand Alice Jones is going to 
marry Jack Robinson, after all," haz- 
ards some one. 

"Why not, I want to know? It 
would be worth something, just to take 
you around. I am thinking of getting 
one myself." 

97 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

"Do you really think so? It's not 
official, and I don't believe it. I have 
heard, quite directly, that he is going 
West with his family, this summer." 

"Everybody's going to the Exposi- 
tion this year." 

"Really? Then, why did Harry 
Smith go off and join the Ambulance 
Corps?" 

"Alice did n't know her own mind, 
I suppose. It was a case of t'other dear 
charmer. And now, it's neither one! 
Poor Alice!" 

"They say the color scheme is quite 
wonderful. Gardens and buildings, and 
exhibits, for all I know, planned to har- 
monize." 

"I'd rather have a Ransack than 
an Effort, if I were buying a car this 
year." 

"Meanwhile there's that fine young 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

porch of the Joneses going begging. 
Wonder what they built it for?" 

"Well, there are days when it's too 
cold to ride, you know, or when the car 
is being fixed. And then, that porch 
has room enough for quite a bridge 
party." 

"Nobody sits on the porch, nowa- 
days, but us. I realize I 'm unfashion- 
able, but I like our own view of the 
point better than any one's else." 

"Don't want to look at the same 
thing all your life, do you?" 

Time always passes swiftly — and 
profitably, you feel — when the affairs 
of your friends are under discussion. 

It is quite sufficient, in piazza con- 
versation, to look receptive when others 
are talking, and, in turn, to give voice 
to whatever lies uppermost in the mind, 
whether it is to the point or not. I 

99 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

know people who are adept at listening 
with their faces only : they look politely 
appreciative when they are addressed, 
but all the time their thoughts are hum- 
ming about in some pleasaunce of their 
own making. A man with this gift 
— it ordinarily is a man — enjoys the 
conversation of the piazza because it 
makes a kind of orchestral accompani- 
ment to his own private musings; 
though he has his bad moments, when 
he is unwarrantably expected to turn 
soloist, mount the platform, and say 
something. 

If there be a determining factor in the 
mood of the piazza, it is a gentle and 
sociable laziness. Logic, consistency, 
all the qualities that imply mental ef- 
fort, are in abeyance. The talk drifts, 
impelled in infinitesimal shoves and 
pushes by every chance sight or sound. 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

The topics may be great or small, the 
talk is of the smallest. And it is, on the 
whole, calm talk. Briskness does not 
stay on the porch; it goes and plays 
tennis or golf. People who are lounging 
in couch-hammocks, rocking in broad 
piazza chairs, or propped by pillows in 
corners, are not likely to speak with 
umbrage or excitement. Yet they enjoy 
being thrilled. They love tales of the 
woeful and the strenuous, and each 
piles the agony a little higher. They 
behold dreadful adventures through a 
haze of comfort, and think of them 
merely as interesting pictures, far-off, 
vague, and impersonal. They even 
take a kind of "penny-dreadful" plea- 
sure in their vicarious feelings of grief 
and horror. 

Like Tennyson's Lotus-eaters, they 
enjoy their melancholy. In fact, for its 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

brief hour, the piazza makes Lotus- 
eaters of us all. For the moment, we 
forget our dutiful pasts and our hard- 
earned futures, and count ourselves 
fortunate to be taking breath in quiet. 
Where trite comment passes, well 
enough, for wisdom, and the oldest 
joke and the slenderest witticism flour- 
ish, brilliance is too stimulating. A 
platitude on the porch is as good as an 
epigram in the parlor. Here is the great 
opportunity of Dullness; for nowhere 
else can so much entertainment be ex- 
tracted from a trifle. Even the bore 
may talk and talk; he will never find 
an audience more submissive. They 
are too comfortable to flee, and too 
much under the spell of their Lotus to 
be critical. But the piazza mood levels 
down, as well as up. Stupid things are 
all well enough ; but when the do-noth- 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

ing spirit creeps upon the learned and 
the clever, they willingly forego any 
intellectual distinction they may have 
had, and join the rest in their stupidity. 
I do not know whether it is more hope- 
ful or discouraging to see greatness take 
so kindly to being like everybody else. 
I cannot recall that pettiness adapts 
itself so readily to being great ! 

When all is said, it is the intuitive 
talker who gives the spice to piazza 
gatherings. His, or her, — and in this 
case it usually is a woman, — good 
things are due to flashes of insight rather 
than to knowledge or reason. She only 
hits upon something good now and 
then; but it costs her no more mental 
effort than to say the inevitable things 
she probably does say the other nine 
tenths of the time. The flashes of the 
intuitive talker cannot be counted upon 

io3 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

to recur with regularity, — like those 
of a lighthouse, — but they are as wel- 
come, in the monotony of the piazza 
conversation, as is a beacon on a murky 
night. 

A childlike, happy reliance upon 
chance is the key to real enjoyment of 
the piazza. Talk, manners, and states 
of mind that would seem awkward or 
ill-judged indoors, are natural and ac- 
ceptable on the porch. While these do 
not go so far as to contradict indoor 
conventions, they constitute a liberal 
standard of behavior, which affords 
relief, and distinction as well, to the 
code of the house. Easy attitudes, un- 
guarded talk, spontaneous action, are 
good manners for the piazza quarter of 
the year. It is a welcome interregnum 
of whim. For, during the other three 
quarters, people plan and apportion 

io4 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

their diversions according to what they 
call their best interests. 

But impulse and whim are traitors; 
they will disclose a foible which self- 
control has kept carefully hidden. 
Thus, among many little frailties be- 
trayed in piazza life, a naive and good- 
tempered selfishness is conspicuous. 
This is no mean spirit, but merely a 
tendency to secure comfort, — a little 
calculation in the matter of breeze and 
favorite chairs ; a little independence of 
others in the matter of occupation, or 
of no occupation at all. Persons who 
are otherwise quite reasonable resent 
infringement of their piazza rights; I 
have known a serious falling-out to 
begin with the misappropriation of a 
rocking-chair. In little things like this, 
does the eternal child within us some- 
times show a pouting face. 

io5 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

The casual always has its amusing 
aspects. Much, for example, depends 
upon the shape of the piazza. If it is 
long and narrow, so that the talkers are 
obliged to sit in a row, then you either 
have a line of confidences in pairs, or a 
monologue, delivered from the vant- 
age-point of the piazza railing, which 
faces them all. If, on the other hand, a 
wide-spread circle of chairs is possible, 
you have a medley, as loud and cheerful 
as a treeful of robins at dawn. There 
are persons, popular and indispensably 
useful in indoor life, who do not shine 
on the porch, no matter how it is 
shaped. These are either too industri- 
ous or too active to be really easy 
there. They bring energy where energy 
is at a discount, and plans where none 
are wanted. Nobody pays any atten- 
tion to them, except to listen with a 
1 06 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

negative politeness when they make 
some energetic offer. People who can- 
not be casual need sympathy, but the 
porch is no place for them. 

Summer friendships and summer 
books are casual weeds. Two or three 
women with nothing in common but 
propinquity of piazzas, can make an 
ordinary friendship look pale. They 
exchange life-histories, and settle the 
reputations of the neighborhood; they 
share their possessions, and take their 
amusements together. It is a pleasant 
situation; it looks like the real thing. 
But intimacies which have their root 
and blossom on the porch, fade alto- 
gether with the first frosts. 

I hardly know why it is that books 

read on the piazza have so often the air 

of having been picked up in the dark. 

Surely book and reader do not always 

107 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

go together as you would expect them 
to do; but people often find great re- 
freshment in getting away from their 
ordinary amusements. There is no in- 
herent reason why a stately lady should 
read grave books; or why a scholarly 
gentleman should regale himself, in his 
hours of relaxation, with treatises that 
cause the unlearned to quake. Never- 
theless, you feel a distinct shock when 
you find the stately lady's piazza book 
one that the boys and girls are find- 
ing "ripping "and "up-to-the-minute," 
and when you find the gentle apostle of 
high thought reading with absorbed 
interest a sad sweet story of the un- 
smooth course of true love. If you ex- 
press polite inquiry, you get explana- 
tions — of the vacation spirit, of plot 
interest in the story, of the need of 
mental rest. All of which sounds sus- 

108 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

piciously like the apologies of the tired 
business man for going to a musical 
comedy. Is it so fatiguing to live on 
speaking terms with one's mind? 

The people who frequent the piazza 
are more interesting than the things 
they say. People nearly always are. 
I have fancied that I saw in those who 
spent most time there an intensifica- 
tion of the piazza mood that amounted 
to temperament. However they clas- 
sify themselves elsewhere, on the porch 
I group them by the way they talk. 
The most irritating of these, to me, is 
the sporting type. It is made up chiefly 
of young, or would be young, persons, 
clad in spotlessly correct sporting cos- 
tume, down to the width of a shoe- 
string, who are, ostensibly, on the way 
to or from their sport. Finding the 
porch comfortable, they linger long and 
109 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

return soon. No one would blame them 
for that. I would forgive them when 
they do not leave it at all, if it were not 
for the condescension with which they 
address those who do not pretend to 
like violence in any form. They expati- 
ate upon the glories of the active life, 
incidentally alluding to themselves as 
exemplars of its beneficent influence. 
The noise of their chatter makes it im- 
possible for more indolent souls to pur- 
sue the windings of their thoughts; 
which are, possibly, quite as interesting 
as the chronicle of the game. At the 
other extreme, are those who come to 
the porch with some slight task-in- 
idleness, which leaves the mind free to 
range afar, on bright wings. Of this 
type is the man who slowly consumes 
a large black cigar, emitting wisdom 
with smoke. I suspect that the Yankee 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

who whittled on the store steps was of 
this type. I used to know a man who 
measured his leisure by his cigars; and 
they grew longer and slower of com- 
bustion, as the summer wore on. The 
woman with an intricate piece of em- 
broidery is his feminine counterpart. I 
readily admit that I choose my po- 
sition with some care, so as to be near 
these leisurely philosophers, for here is 
your real talk. I like the conversation 
of women sewing; if they ever philoso- 
phize, it is when their hands are busy 
with some not too pressing task. The 
only complaint I have of knitters is that 
they always seem to be in a hurry. Fin- 
gers fly, and lips move; but eyes and 
ears are keen, and their comments are 
always ready. The counting rather adds 
piquancy to their words. With what art 
they arrange to count off sixty stitches 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

in the middle of an interesting bit of 
gossip ! 

Some men, and fewer women, frankly 
take their piazza straight, as it were, 
with no adulteration of book, game, or 
work. In primitive neighborhoods, the 
men of this type tilt their chairs against 
the wall, and the women rock steadily. 
Those swaying rockers! I can see the 
toes of the occupants spurning the 
ground as the chair reaches its forward 
pitch, and dangling a little, as it rocks 
backward! What better indication of 
a mind completely idle? And, oddly 
enough, no one else has the talking 
power of these idle ones, whether prim- 
itive or fashionable. Everything sug- 
gests comment to them, which they see 
no reason for restraining. They get 
endless entertainment, and give some, 
out of their fellow beings. Little exu- 



PIAZZA CONVERSATION 

berances of taste, or judgment, or senti- 
ment, are a favorite theme with them, 
and caricature is their favorite method 
of criticism. They take very good care 
to leave no joint in their own armor 
of correctness and conventionality. I 
often wish some one would find a vul- 
nerable spot for a keen thrust. 

Now, I do not own to the piazza 
temperament. I am one of those who 
have not time to cultivate it. And fur- 
thermore, I am no devotee of the life of 
unrelieved meditation. But, I hate to 
see those desert wastes that once were 
piazzas. House after house, along any 
great summer highway, shows its porch, 
gay with all the trappings of outdoor 
elegance, — vacant. They have hung 
their harps upon the willows, and gone 
a-motoring. There is companionship, 
and there may be (though I doubt it) 

n3 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

conversation in the automobile; there 
is surely pleasure, exhilaration, the up- 
lifting of heart at the sight of the beauty 
of the world. But we need the piazza, 
just as much as ever. There, are peace, 
and quiet talk, and the touch upon the 
soul of a dear familiar view. 




VIII 

The Conservation of Shabbiness 

t is an important moment 
for the family when some 
one discovers that the house 
is really too shabby to be 
suitable, and should have been done 
over long ago. Some one starts a lively 
discussion by talking of improvements 
and repairs that may as well be in- 
cluded in the doing-over; and another 
adds heat, as well as light, to the situa- 
tion, by suggesting a decorator, so as 
to have the job done right. Comments 
ensue, both respectful and pessimistic : 
To the effect that the happy days are no 
more, when those most concerned went 
blithely to the paper-hanger's shop and 
chose a pattern that pleased them, re- 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

gardless of artistic notions, — a pro- 
ceeding which turned out as well, after 
all, as some carefully studied effects 
that might be mentioned ; that, on the 
contrary, "pleasing patterns" had al- 
most always turned out very badly, 
but nobody ever dared to say so! and 
that only a specialist could tell before- 
hand just how a house was going to 
look when everything was in place; 
that, whose house was it, anyway, 
and one would really like to keep one's 
furniture, which the decorators never 
allowed ! 

By way of final compromise, it is 
admitted that, after all, one merely 
gets the expert's opinion, and then goes 
on and does as one pleases. Whatever 
is at length decided upon, from tearing 
out and remodeling even to fresh pa- 
per and paint, the whole family looks 

116 



SHABBINESS 

upon the impending change as a specu- 
lation. They feel that though the house 
may emerge from the confusion im- 
proved and beautified, it will somehow 
be a different place. 

It is astonishing what fresh paper 
and paint will do! In the presence of 
that immaculate complacency, our still 
useful and hitherto unimpeachable fur- 
niture seems for the first time to show 
its real character. Traits appear that 
we have never before suspected in 
them. Heavy masses, sprawling out- 
lines, faded or unpleasant colors, — 
something is sure to crop out demand- 
ing instant banishment, or, at the least, 
complete renovation. Mere comfort is 
too slipshod and shabby an effect to 
contribute to an artistic whole. We 
are obliged to face the melancholy fact 
that the big chair and the middle-sized 
117 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

chair, which have for years been the 
measure and symbol of our after-din- 
ner peace, have no "air." One who is 
supposed to know would permit us to 
keep them, provided they are recush- 
ioned with stuff of a modern pattern 
that would fairly twitter and peck at 
the occupants; but the same authority 
hints, in reprisal, that the capacious 
table and hospitable if unpretending 
sofa do not add to the tone of the room, 
and might with advantage be replaced. 
Thus, the things which have, through 
long use, become adapted to family 
idiosyncrasies, pass from the rooms 
that once knew them, and take their 
station humbly in remote corners of the 
house. 

Cousin Jane is, for her, rather plain- 
tive on this subject. It appears that 
Sally is having her own way, at last, 



SHABBINESS 

and the house is in the hands of a deco- 
rator. It is going to be lovely, in the 
end, and will make a perfect back- 
ground for Sally's social enterprises. 
Cousin Jane and Cousin John view the 
plans with pride ; but they are already 
nonplussed about their possessions. In 
particular, there are an old sofa and an 
enormous secretary, of no mentionable 
design, which have held places of honor 
in the library ever since I can remem- 
ber. But the library is to be done over, 
along with the rest of the house. It is 
going to have one wall knocked out, 
and another made into windows, and it 
is going to change its nature and join 
with the back parlor to make a living- 
room. It will be sunny where the old 
room was dark; and, according to the 
description, finely proportioned where 
the old room was simply not quite 

"9 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

square. But it is to be a Jacobean 
room; and to this Cousin Jane is quite 
unreconciled. She feels that scorn is 
thereby cast upon her two dear, shabby 
pieces of mid-Victorian black-walnut. 
"There's no place left in the house 
for them; that's plain," said she. "Of 
course, even I can see that they would 
n't go in the Adam parlor, or the Dutch 
morning-room. And John and I both 
hate the hole we call John's den, which 
is merely a receptacle for our Indian 
stuff, and besides is already full of that 
hard, slippery Mission furniture. But 
it would n't ruin the house, for me, if 
we were to let those two things stay 
right where they are. Is Jacobean so 
very far from mid-Victorian?" She 
laughed, as, sooner or later, she usually 
does. "But we're quite mid-Victorian 
ourselves, all but Sally ! She 's Futurist, 



SHABBINESS 

when she is n't Pre-Raphaelite. At 
any rate, there's nothing about us 
that's Jacobite; why should we have it 
thrust upon us in furniture? They in- 
sure you against almost every kind of 
loss, nowadays; I'd like to have some 
redecoration insurance ! " She reflected 
for a moment in silence; then summed 
up her case. "It would n't be so bad 
to have the house artistic, if I could be 
sure there was going to be a human cor- 
ner in it, or a comfortable chair. But 
I wish the decorators had to sit in 
some of the chairs they buy for other 
people!" 

I feel for Cousin Jane. She is too 
affluent to be allowed the luxury of 
a little shabbiness. She belongs to the 
large class of those who commit them- 
selves, out of regard for the feelings of 
others, to a condition of eternal spick- 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

and-spanness. The inquiring glances 
of friends and acquaintances at her old 
secretary and sofa, standing shabbily 
in the midst of Jacobean state, would 
do more to precipitate their removal 
than much argument at home. We 
shall never see them again, I know. 

But it is hard for any of us to pre- 
serve our shabbiness, whatever the size 
of our bank account. It requires no lit- 
tle courage and self-confidence. All the 
arguments are against it — pride, taste, 
prudence even; it seems as if nothing 
was to be said for it, except the reason 
which is no argument at all — "Be- 
cause I like it." Even that, however, 
withers before criticism. Let a cen- 
sorious eye fall upon our worn and out- 
dated things, and our old happy re- 
liance in them is forever gone. It is 
only by an effort of will that we 



SHABBINESS 

keep what we fear no one else would 
have. 

That is a pity, for brand-new things 
have a certain uniformity, no matter 
how elegant they may be. They may 
show the taste of their possessors ; they 
cannot reveal their characters until the 
newness is worn off. A room that is 
complete all at once is tragically incom- 
plete; it needs the presence of some- 
thing shabby, something with the dim- 
ness of long human association. Most 
of us from a necessity that is wiser than 
our wishes, and a few from sentiment, 
keep something of the past in our new 
rooms, and leave, also, something for 
the future. 

It is their unimaginative complete- 
ness that makes the model rooms of 
expositions so dreary. One triumph of 
the decorator's art, in particular, I re- 

123 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

member, as combining the blankness of 
Sahara with an Arctic chilliness. It 
was not really a room at all, but an ar- 
tistic success, a study in colors, tex- 
tures, values, lines, and what not. Noth- 
ing jarred, or was out of relation to the 
whole. Even the motifs of the curtain 
borders matched the design on the pot- 
tery jars; and the strip of embroidery 
that hung" from a basket repeated the 
theme. But it was inconceivable that 
any one should ever finish that embroid- 
ery, or bring bouquets of heterogeneous 
flowers for those bowls, or move a chair 
from its position. As for the chairs, 
they were like fixed stars ! Nothing in 
the room had ever been adapted to any 
human use. 

Shabbiness, on the other hand, is the 
creation of use. It is achieved through 
the wearing-down of things by the 
124 



SHABBINESS 

never-to-be-duplicated agglomeration 
of tastes and habits called a family ; and 
really expresses the family's composite 
idea of home. How many years of liv- 
ing the process takes! How much of 
family history is illustrated in its old 
furniture and worn carpets! Every- 
thing is eloquent — a mended chair- 
leg, the humpy springs of a couch, 
rubbed book-covers, the threadbare 
path across a sitting-room carpet which 
marked the short cut the boys used to 
take from play to dinner! 

Sentiment, habit, and history thus 
unite in making shabbiness the right 
background of the life domestic. Peo- 
ple may be known by their works, but 
by the wear they give their furniture 
they are understood. I am inclined to 
believe that a man never is under- 
stood, until he is seen in relation to his 

125 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

own background. For there he has 
created something which explains him 
without his intending it. Men feel this 
more strongly than women, and are 
less willing to cast out the old for the 
new. A millionaire of simple habits let 
the vicissitudes of art, wealth, and his 
family work their will with the rest of 
the house, but kept the plain and well- 
worn furnishings of his own rooms as 
they had always been. Possibly he felt, 
what all his friends saw, that they were 
better suited to his gaunt and angular 
personality than the brocade and ma- 
hogany which might have taken their 
place. The personal relics of departed 
great ones of the earth, their rings and 
snuff-boxes, their coats and shawls, do 
not tell nearly as much of them as the 
furniture they have used. Savonarola's 
robe is but cloth; his desk and stool, 
126 



SHABBINESS 

rubbed to brightness by wear, his 
thumbed book and narrow bed, tell all 
we need to know of his daily way of 
life. 

Oddly enough, the furniture that has 
been a background for interesting per- 
sonalities acquires an interesting air 
itself, no matter how shabby it is. It 
has spent years of its existence accom- 
modating itself to the ways of one 
group of people ; and it shows a dignity 
of service not to be found in the most 
finely proportioned new piece. That 
is why people hunt antiques, I suppose. 
If they can buy, along with good de- 
sign and good material, that dignity of 
use, they put just so much more beauty 
into their homes. Those who have the 
money, and the wish, to change their 
houses, as Cousin Jane was cajoled into 
doing, send their own old furniture to 
127 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

the second-hand store, and buy an- 
tiques to suit the style of their remod- 
eled rooms. 

And styles do change, there's no 
denying! The laughable thing about 
Cousin Jane's discarded walnut is, that 
some day it will be rediscovered, and 
dragged from its seclusion in storeroom 
or second-hand shop. Some one will 
be redecorating in the mid-Victorian 
style. The dealer in antiques will be 
very effusive about its mellowness, and 
state of repair, and solidity ; there will 
be the jargon about "picking up," and 
"getting hold of," and all the rest of 
it. And the new owner will talk about 
her "pieces," and perhaps give their 
pedigree. Meanwhile, Cousin Jane will, 
I hope, be getting used to her Jacobean 
chairs. 

After all, shabbiness is worth pre- 
128 



SHABBINESS 

serving. It is an exquisite quality, not 
to be parted with for any ordinary kind 
of luxury. It is slow to win; for the 
mere domestication of furniture is a 
matter of years, and things keep their 
new look for longer than that. Once 
gained, it is unique, moreover; and as a 
harmonizing element, it can ill be 
spared. Like old people, who have 
learned not to quarrel over minor af- 
fairs, but who are nowise obliterated by 
their compromises, shabbiness brings 
together under one large kindliness 
styles that differ, and differ perhaps 
assertively; saving even for the most 
modest thing a place of its own. There 
are aesthetic values in shabbiness, too. 
But beautiful though it is to look at, in 
its gently blurred outlines and blending 
of faded colors, it is essentially the spir- 
itual quality that we value, expressive 
129 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

of a delicate restraint and pride, of the 
willingness to forego an easy effective- 
ness for a slower and more subtle reve- 
lation. 




IX 

On Being too Kind 

am not often moved to envy 
men. In general, I am dis- 
posed to accept my share 
of the oft-quoted limitations 
and prerogatives of my lot rather 
with amusement than in sorrow or in 
anger. Why worry about them, any- 
way, when mere living in such a thrill- 
ing business: when the night-wind 
blows across half the world to the door 
of my house, and every day the come- 
dies, the tragedies, and the imperish- 
able hopes of other human beings cross 
and parallel my own? But I confess 
there are occasions when I do envy 
men's social independence. At times, 
when I have exhausted my versatility in 

i3i 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

phrasing polite notes, and my ingenu- 
ity in planning menus and prizes, and 
my tact in all kinds of ways, then I wish 
I could hide my manners under a cloak 
of masculine gruff ness; and, expecting 
nothing, have nothing expected of me. 
I should like to disentangle myself 
from the endless chain of feminine 
kindnesses; and I would cheerfully 
swap the woman's code of thoughtful- 
ness, for the man's, of complete, selfish 
frankness in social relations. 

If, as we acknowledge with pride, 
kindness is one of our feminine preroga- 
tives, it must be acknowledged also 
that we have a limitation which goes 
with it, in our proneness to carry our 
good works to excess. We are too busy 
being kind to realize when we are being 
too kind. Like most of our other pre- 
rogatives and limitations, these are 

l32 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

both traits of our feminine nature, not 
to be lightly parted with at a wish, or 
transformed by a vote. As a matter of 
fact, we attack our kindnesses with the 
same thorough-going zeal with which 
we conduct all our daily enterprises. 
We love to be doing things; and are 
never quite so happy as when we can 
complain of having too much to do. 

Ever since Penelope's day, women 
have worshiped the big endeavor in 
everyday affairs. Heroism in little 
things is their daily practice. The in- 
significance of the duties upon which 
they expend their strength and talent 
does not trouble them; the mere size 
of a cause never stirs their enthusiasm 
as does its needfulness. It may be a 
grander achievement, they freely ad- 
mit, to serve a nation or to save a life 
than to preserve the family temper 

•i33 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

from disintegration during a house- 
keeping crisis ; but the smaller achieve- 
ment meets the more immediate need. 
If heroism can save the day for the 
family temper, why, heroism shall! 

When they take their kindnesses in 
this heroic spirit, they scorn to spare 
themselves, still less their friends, a 
single smile. They are lynx-eyed in 
their watchfulness to anticipate the 
wishes of those about them; they de- 
light in the position of confidante and 
adviser, which gives them a chance to 
be anxious about other people's lives, 
as well as their own ; they love to make 
others comfortable, even — perhaps es- 
pecially ! — at the cost of discomfort to 
themselves. Their social kindness is 
just as strenuous. Think of the origin- 
ality, industry, and devotion that go 
into the making of a successful dinner- 

i34 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

party, a little gift, even a note! But 
add to these duties the acknowledg- 
ments, and retorts courteous, and coun- 
ter-attacks of festivities, that follow 
one another as the day the night; the 
soul must needs be made of heroic stuff 
that pursues such a course! 

By theories of sentiment, it should 
be sweet to have one's wishes antici- 
pated, and one's comfort looked out 
for, and to have one's career the object 
of solicitude; but in actuality there 
are times when these gracious services 
are suspiciously like meddling. Some 
things there are, as none know better 
than women, that people would prefer 
to do for themselves, even tardily or 
imperfectly. Who, for example, wants 
to be deprived of the anticipatory joy 
of cutting the leaves of his own mag- 
azine, or the reminiscent and wholly 

i35 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

egotistic one of setting his desk in his 
own kind of order? Even my child 
cherishes her notion of independence; 
she insists upon dressing her dolly her- 
self, though Mary Jane's always ques- 
tionable beauty is not enhanced by 
her unpracticed fingers. Moreover, the 
familiar adage of "one man's meat, 
another's poison," applies in kindness 
no less than elsewhere. It is with a 
show of reason that people are as dis- 
trustful of the advice of others as they 
are of their ways of comfort. A cush- 
iony corner, which is a flowery bed of 
ease to one, puts another to the torture; 
and a line of action which is perfectly 
comprehensible, even sagacious, on the 
part of one, would be sheer foolhardi- 
ness in another. Kindness that is not 
wanted, no matter how modest and en- 
durable in itself, is no kindness; and 

i36 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

people who go about thrusting their 
kindly offices upon others do not always 
get the thanks they deserve. 

Or expect. For kindness and altru- 
ism are not the same thing. Gratitude 
is precisely what those who practice 
excessive kindness are working for, and 
they are willing to go to great trouble to 
win it. They multiply their kindnesses 
not only because they wish to be kind, 
but because they sniff from afar the in- 
cense of gratitude, and it is as breath 
to their nostrils. They indulge in kind- 
ness as they might in dancing or sport, 
because it makes them appear to ad- 
vantage. Their kind deeds are a back- 
ground against which they stand out as 
figures of magnanimity — and useful- 
ness; and if they seem pleased with 
themselves, there is some excuse for that 
in the homage of thanks they receive! 

i3 7 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

Being grateful, on the other hand, is 
rather an ungrateful business. For one 
thing, it offers no scope for originality. 
It is n't that we hate to feel grateful, 
or that we hate to say so ; but that there 
are so few ways of saying it. The wit- 
tiest can say no more than "thank 
you," and the stupidest no less. It is 
just as bad, whether our gratitude is 
spontaneous and deeply felt, or of the 
mild social type. In the one case, any 
expression seems tame ; in the other, we 
struggle to find some variation from the 
conventional phrases. 

Besides, while gratitude is not in- 
compatible with dignity, to be grateful 
and graceful at once is a delicate prob- 
lem in manners. A hang-dog and grudg- 
ing mien is as awkward as the foolish 
face of praise. The moment of thanks 
is an uncomfortable moment, at best, 

i38 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

and the burden of making it agreeable 
for every one is entirely on the grateful. 
Social perspicacity is called into play, 
moreover, to adjust the warmth of the 
thanks to the size of the favor and the 
importance of the person bestowing it. 
One alleviating fact may be noted, how- 
ever; and that is that every one must 
take his turn at receiving kindness. He 
who to-day pays for his pleasure in 
gratitude may be bestowing the favor 
to-morrow, and graciously receiving the 
thanks ! 

It is hard for women to be content to 
receive a kindness, without wanting to 
pay it back. When we have said our 
thanks in our very best manner, we 
still have a lurking, guilty residuum of 
shame, as though we were making off 
with something that did not belong to 
us. We feel that we should assert our 
1 39 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

equality, no less than our friendliness, 
by doing something just as kind. Every 
woman has a horror of social debt. 
Even while she consumes the salad of 
hospitality, she is planning to repay 
the same with tea and cakes of her own; 
and, if she is of a nimble imagination, 
she probably has her list in mind and 
her decorations decided upon, before 
she says good-bye. When she looks the 
gift-horse in the mouth, it is by no 
means with carping comment, but with 
a searching inquiry into her own abil- 
ity to return a gift as valuable. 

Broadly speaking, I quite agree with 
the moralist who declares that feeling 
should flower in deeds. He has a pretty 
metaphor and a harmless idea. But of 
his humanity I am not so sure. Why 
must feeling be put into the forcing- 
house like a pot of tulips, and made to 

i4o 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

splurge resplendent — and then wilt? 
I like better the way of a reluctant 
primrose that we cherished for its very 
reticence. Refusing to yield to the per- 
suasions of the hothouse, it never burst 
into bloom all at once; but every few 
days it would glow afresh with a single, 
rosy, fragrant cluster. It seemed to 
know the secret of kindness. 

However we may rail against being 
too kind, it is not easy to escape it. It 
is a trap quick to dig and hard to climb 
out of. Moreover, sometimes the only 
way to be kind at all is to be too kind : 
to deny the unwise request, give the 
unsought advice, tell the disagreeable 
truth. To dare to hurt, is heroism that 
many cultivators of the heroic in kind- 
ness never aspire to. That is surgical 
kindness, hard, but healing. Strangely, 
though, the temptation grows, with 
i4i 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

practice, to diagnose everything as a 
case for operation. Cruel, only to be 
kind, is one of those axiomatic untruths 
that people believe in because they find 
in them excuse for their own failings. 

After all, the manner in which kind- 
ness or gratitude is offered has all to do 
with determining the degree of appreci- 
ation with which it is met. It is n't so 
much what they do, as Chevalier's song 
memorably puts it, as the way they do 
it. Is it patronizing? Away with it! 
Is it insinuating? Has it an aroma of 
martyred devotion, or policy, or en- 
nui? Then beware! 

A type of person whose kindness al- 
ways seemed obnoxious to me, because 
of her manners, was the too sweet 
young person, depicted with enthusi- 
asm by novelists of the Victorian era. 
How one does, at times, hate Little 

l42 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

Dorrit and Florence Dombey and 
Amelia Sedley, and all their kind ! The 
hearth-rug heroine was an officious as 
well as a boresome creature. Her chief 
pleasures in life appeared to be running 
to get people's slippers and bring them 
to the family living-room ; opening their 
newspapers; finding the page in their 
books where they had left off reading; 
and pushing their chairs where she 
thought they ought to want them. Nor 
was it enough that the tired business 
man or woman endured all this grate- 
fully; as soon as there was time for a 
minute's quiet meditation, she began 
to entertain him with "chat"! Appar- 
ently all these things were done at some 
cost of time and effort and sacrifice of 
what passed for personal plans; at any 
rate, the hearth-rug lady was always 
sensitively conscious of her own use- 

i43 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

fulness. But I don't know which I felt 
most irritated with: the girl, with her 
smirking kindness, or the able-bodied 
man — still more the woman — who 
would enjoy receiving such little serv- 
ices as a matter of daily practice. 

Of late, we seem to have developed 
a new manner in kindness, which is the 
antithesis of the hearth-rug type: effi- 
cient, off-hand, quite modern, in fact, 
well adapted to big enterprises and big 
crowds. It is brisk, exact, business- 
like, the kindness of the professionally 
kind, of ministers, physicians, social 
workers and social leaders. To say the 
worst of it at once, it is an institutional 
manner. The individual is chiefly in- 
teresting as representative of a class. 
Everybody is catalogued, as it were, 
with cross-references upon such sub- 
jects as failings, complaints, abilities, 

i44 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

and ancestry; even tastes and anniver- 
saries are registered, and duly com- 
mented upon by note or gift. All this 
is done frankly and directly, with no 
apologetic hemming and hawing, as 
though these were delicate questions; 
and entertainment or charity is meted 
out, in proportion to needs and deserts. 

As a method, the modern way is 
both easy and thorough, sensible and 
just; but as manners, it is perhaps a 
little rough. Most people have a mys- 
terious disinclination to being pigeon- 
holed ; their self-respect suffers at being 
invited by classes, and liked under speci- 
fied types. The mellowness of the old, 
personal hospitality, and the old, warm- 
hearted, unscientific philanthropy, is 
still to seek in the safety-first kindness 
of to-day. 

I recall with some fellow-feeling the 

i45 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

story of the shiftless husband who had 
always hankered to buy his wife finery. 
Once, having gratefully accepted a con- 
tribution of money for his family's 
needs, he laid most of it out upon a 
bonnet nodding with feathers and flow- 
ers. Her loyal gratitude, despite the 
yearnings of her housewifely heart for 
such plain necessities as stockings and 
shoes, met halfway his generous fool- 
ishness, and faced down his critics. Of 
like mind with these two, though of 
different expression, was the woman 
who regularly sold the monthly bag of 
flour sent her by a charity organization 
and bought steak. "Faith, what we 
need is a square male, now and thin," 
said she in explanation. In truth, kind- 
ness is not enough ; there is a wayward 
spirit of independence in us all, that 
demands its tribute to lay upon the 
iA6 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

altar where dances the little spark of 
Joy. 

It is partly because of their manners 
that public benefactors never get all 
the public gratitude they really de- 
serve. They give, but they cannot 
quite give away. Ironically possessed 
by the longing for the continuance of 
their names upon the lips of the living, 
they hedge about their gifts with direc- 
tions and restrictions that cause them 
to be remembered, not always as kindly 
as they might reasonably hope to be. 
I feel sorry for the futility of their am- 
bitions, when I see the memorials with 
which they so frequently consign them- 
selves to oblivion. Nobody looks at 
tablet, bust, or statue. The public, 
having carried out the letter of the 
bequest in placing it, cheerfully turn 
their backs upon it, and with zeal set 

i/l7 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

about the business of enjoying the rest 
of the benefaction, as a well-earned re- 
ward, belonging to them by right. 

This is not a plea for simplifying 
Christmas! Being too kind, after all, 
is quite as much a question of how, as 
of how much. True neighborliness is 
perfect in manner, because it is fine in 
thought. Nothing is more humble ; it is 
kindness on a basis of pure equality. 
The desire to help, and the need to be 
helped, are constantly changing posi- 
tion. If one has eggs or a hammer to 
lend at a critical moment, the other has 
something sure to be needed soon or 
late, if only a sympathetic ear, or a 
new stitch to show. To a few rare na- 
tures, the act of giving is the end in it- 
self. It is a necessary activity of their 
lives, to add to the happiness and re- 
spond to the needs of others. Gratitude, 

i48 



ON BEING TOO KIND 

in relations like this, is one of the com- 
ponents of affection, not a phrase that 
can be uttered. One of the ennobling 
experiences of life is the mutual grati- 
tude that exists between friends or 
members of a family, deeply felt, but 
often unspoken. 

Such kindness can never be too 
much, because it takes thought. But in 
these days of complicated demands, the 
mere friendly thought has been over- 
grown by deeds and things. There is, 
then, greater need than ever of a clear 
space now and then in the midst of liv- 
ing, where there is plenty of feeling and 
thinking, but of speech and deed, little. 
Better still if such a space be bright 
with friendship. It is like coming out, 
after a hard walk through the woods, on 
a sunlit clearing, with blossoms dancing 
and birds singing around its edge. 



X 




Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat 

" Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, where have you been ? " 
"I've been to London to visit the Queen!" 

"Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, what did you there?" 
" I frightened a little mouse, under her 
chair!" 

his rhyme has a good deal 
to say, in its small com- 
pass. Kitty might boast and 
swagger, but he was all cat, 
nevertheless. Not even an august 
Presence could keep him from his sport; 
and the opportunities of travel and so- 
cial adventure took no hold on his im- 
agination, because in it the only thing 
that loomed large was Mouse. Good 
cat satire, to be sure; and good human 
satire, too. When I look at the illustra- 
tions of the cat's return, in the editions 

i5o 



PUSSY-CAT, PUSSY-CAT 

of Mother Goose that come under my 
eye, I find him often pictured as a sort 
of gay Lothario, clad in town finery, 
and posturing at his door; but some- 
times as a plain country cat, evidently 
glad to be free of his city manners, yet 
bragging of the big town to his admir- 
ing family. In the one case, the Queen 
seems to have been a mere incident in 
the course of many exciting adven- 
tures, a part of the setting of his own 
personal drama. That he chose, amid 
such aristocratic surroundings, to pur- 
sue his own game, rather than to spend 
his time playing the courtier, only adds 
to his glory as he tells the tale. The 
other interpretation takes a view quite 
different. Kit's very commonplace cat- 
achievement gains grandeur and dis- 
tinction from the fact that the Queen's 
chair was the scene of it, and its victim, 

i5i 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

presumably, the Queen's mouse. He, 
among plain cats, had been specially 
favored. One feels sure that the next 
question, unrecorded in our annals, 
must have been, — 

"Pussy-cat, how did the Queen's mouse taste?" 

The diverting human truth about the 
story, no matter how it is interpreted, 
is that neither the Palace, nor the 
Queen's self, nor the strange ways of 
London, have impressed the traveler so 
much as himself. People are, naturally, 
more important to themselves than 
Queens or Colosseums or scenery or 
works of art; but alas, when they re- 
turn from their sight-seeing with but 
one tale to tell! It seems as though 
they might be content to tell it, and 
thereafter stay at home ; but the Pussy- 
cats are the most inveterate travelers. 

i5a 



PUSSY-GAT, PUSSY-CAT 

They are to be found everywhere, 
either enacting or relating their adven- 
ture; and that remains unchanged, 
though they seem to like to change the 
background, and vary the incidents 
which embellish the main theme. 
Groups scatter before them, and con- 
versation fails. Yet they always man- 
age to find listeners, who, possibly, are 
waiting for a chance to break in with a 
mouse story of their own. Very likely 
the Pussy-cats find a large part of the 
pleasure of travel in arriving home; 
they enjoy their momentary position 
in the center of the stage, and take 
advantage of the indulgent interest of 
their friends to discourse, with great 
satisfaction to themselves, upon mice 
they have met under the chairs of 
potentates. 
Wherever you meet him, the Pussy- 

i53 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

cat is a poor listener. He has no notion 
of conversation; he wants to do all the 
talking himself. Provided you are do- 
cile and attentive, he is willing to go to 
some effort to entertain you with his 
experiences; but he is keen to detect a 
wandering or rebellious temper, and as 
relentless as a schoolmaster in carrying 
his lecture through to the end. Picture 
post-cards are more of a help to him 
than to his audience; they save him 
the trouble of description, because they 
show pictures and places exactly as 
they are. But your fate is sealed, if you 
so much as glance at them. No such 
luck is yours as to turn them over for a 
few minutes by yourself, choosing what 
to leave and what to look at. He — or 
with quite as much probability she — 
sets you down before the whole collec- 
tion, naming each card for you, and 

i54 



PUSSY-GAT, PUSSY-CAT 

politely correcting you whenever you 
skip, or turn two at a time. The effect 
on your nerves is as though some one 
whistled the tune you were playing. 
He likes even better to illustrate with 
snap-shot photographs, which have a 
corroborative value, proving him to 
have been in various interesting spots in 
Europe by showing the spot, with him 
on it. Before he is halfway through, 
you are thankful that there are so many 
restrictions upon the use of the camera 
about national monuments. 

You have to agree with your Pussy- 
cat friend, just as you have to let him 
say his say. His story is one of special 
privilege and private information. He 
will cap every anecdote he hears with 
one of his own having a bigger thrill. 
He happens to have visited towns in 
the very week of their most character- 

i55 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

istic local celebrations; or his friends 
have gained admission for him to 
places usually barred to foreigners. 
This is partly Europe's fault, however. 
She has distributed her festas through 
the year so impartially that no matter 
where you go, or when, you are likely 
to find an anniversary celebration of 
something or other, to flatter you. 

We have some neighbors of this sort. 
They have recently returned from a 
tour of the Far East. We watched 
them as they came down the street, 
looking exactly as they had looked 
when they started out, even to the 
neatly folded raincoats on their arms. 
They have adopted a uniform for 
travel, and wear it inflexibly, whether 
they are going to Paris or the Yosemite, 
or merely on a day's excursion around 
the islands. We could not help wonder- 

i56 



PUSSY-CAT, PUSSY-CAT 

ing how their equipment had with- 
stood the wear and tear of a year's 
travel; or whether, perhaps, their ex- 
traordinarily unprepossessing attire was 
not the duplicate, thoughtfully taken 
along, of that in which they had started 
out. 

We knew, within limits, what their 
homecoming conversation would be; 
could almost tell how they had amused 
themselves at every halting-place. It 
would take more than a trip to the Far 
East to disarrange their habits! Still, 
we could scarcely wait for them to wash 
the stains of travel off, before going to 
see them. 

We wanted some verification of our 
guesses, and we got it! When we ar- 
rived, they were engaged in setting 
forth the mementos they had gathered 
in their journey. The array of trifles 

157 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

gave their parlor the look of a Christ- 
mas morning. We tried not to see the 
show, or at least to pass it over with 
casual mention; feverishly we flung 
questions and bits of news at our 
friends. But in vain. They were as 
proud of their trophies as though they 
had brought home unique specimens 
of handicraft, snatched from a jealous 
world! We had no choice but to ex- 
amine them, one by one, with com- 
ments that we strove to make appro- 
priate. But there is little in paper- 
cutters and souvenir spoons to inspire 
remark. The things we saw might al- 
most as well have been bought any- 
where as in the places they did come 
from. Luckily for us, however, the 
name of the place was plainly to be 
read, carved, painted, or written upon 
each article ; or we should never, and I 

1 58 



PUSSY-CAT, PUSSY-CAT 

doubt if the owners would, have been 
able to distinguish Hongkong from 
Bombay, or Persia from Japan. 

They barely did, in their talk. Ed- 
ward was glib with statistics as to al- 
titudes and populations, and his wife 
with remarks upon the feeding facilities 
of Asia; but these geographic facts of 
their Odyssey being dismissed with 
words few and fitting, they turned with 
enthusiasm to the recital of their per- 
sonal adventures, which, like their 
trophies, might have taken place any- 
where. 

In particular, Edward's umbrella 
was a theme upon which they en- 
larged, with shrewd Yankee humor. 
It had traveled with them, in previous 
incarnations of silk or alpaca, on former 
voyages; completing with this one its 
circuit of the globe. He told us in ex- 

i5q 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

actly what world-renowned examples 
of architecture, in as many different 
countries, it had been forgotten and 
reclaimed, till it had become to him a 
symbol of his good luck in travel. The 
umbrella itself was brought out for our 
inspection, looking, for an adventur- 
ous umbrella, quite commonplace. We 
could think of nothing to say to it; it 
was not even like a dog, which could 
at least be patted for its intelligence in 
sticking to its owner. As an umbrella 
story, the tale was undeniably amus- 
ing, but as travel-talk it gave us no 
light — on Korea or Ceylon, for in- 
stance — which we wanted, having read 
lurid statements about them in recent 
sea-yarns. But the talk always turned 
personal, in whatever direction we 
headed it by our questions. When the 
umbrella topic was exhausted, there 
1 60 



PUSSY-CAT, PUSSY-CAT 

was still the square meal, and the old 
acquaintance, and the hard-driven bar- 
gain. 

We could have forgiven them the 
souvenirs; they might have been so 
much worse. There might have been 
more of them, for one thing. But 
the irritating fact remained that they 
would talk of themselves when we 
wanted them to talk of what they had 
seen. We were aching to hear of garish 
colors, outlandish architecture, strange 
physiognomies and stranger manners; 
while they thought, good people, that 
we were concerned about them. We 
had gone to see them anticipating dis- 
appointment; so we went home little 
sadder, if no wiser, than we had set out. 

The real objection to hearing people 
talk of their travels, I believe, is that, 
like our neighbors, they actually do not 

161 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

talk of them, but of something else. 
I remember my own disillusionment 
when I was a naive and optimistic trav- 
eler. I expected my fellow-travelers to 
be founts of inspiration and informa- 
tion, in the approved manner of Stod- 
dard's lectures. I never in the least 
minded listening to a recital of well- 
known facts about a place I was visit- 
ing; I was even ready to do my share in 
rehearsing guide-book criticisms, and 
warming over local legends. But the 
vagaries of the postal laws were more 
often mentioned than those of saints 
or sinners, and fees and fares were 
more enthusiastically discussed than 
styles of architecture. In my thirst 
for improvement, I have cast scruple 
to the winds and eavesdropped be- 
fore masterpieces; but only to receive 
an eavesdropper's reward. I have lis- 
162 



PUSSY-CAT, PUSSY-GAT 

tened to an absorbed discussion of the 
ramifications of New England geneal- 
ogy, going on under the satirical eye 
of Velasquez' Pope Innocent; and to 
a plaintive tale of good intentions 
spurned, circumstantially related, in 
the face of the Jungfrau. In the Vatican 
conclave of marble gods, I have heard 
babble of everything but the glory that 
was Greece. Yet I live in a glass house 
myself; for have I not spent precious 
minutes under the dome of St. Mark's, 
arguing the merits of the tea-cakes on 
either side of the Piazza? 

Perhaps, after all, I suffered the 
worst shocks when I found people will- 
ing to stick to the subject, and really 
talk about their travels. For what is 
there to gladden the heart of a seeker 
after inspiration, in the talk of pedants 
to whom an ancient church is but a 

i63 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

diagram of names and dates; or in the 
sighs of sentimental ladies over the dead 
and gone past, much less their snappish 
rebukes to any one who dares raise a 
natural voice in the presence of a relic of 
that past ; or in the skepticism of young 
persons defiantly "getting" culture, and 
fairly boasting of their ignorance? 

Travelers of the Pussy-cat type have 
at least the merit of keeping their hu- 
manity. The pity is that the humanity 
is so limited, and at the same time so 
assertive. Yet their egotism takes dif- 
ferent forms. I once knew an elderly 
lady, whose life had been a series of ex- 
citing adventures in three different 
countries; she had come through these 
with but two topics, which she intro- 
duced in all kinds of guises, — the price 
of commodities and the virtues of her 
family. 

i64 



PUSSY-CAT, PUSSY-CAT 

She was no worse than the newspaper 
writer from a small New England city 
that prides itself upon its journalistic 
achievements, who was among those 
present — one can scarcely say more — 
at the funeral pageant of King Edward. 
The crowds did not in the least engage 
his attention during the hours of wait- 
ing, nor did their hushed patience, nor 
even the cause of their gathering. On 
the contrary, he beguiled the time by 
telling his neighbors on the platform all 
he could remember about himself, his 
town, and his paper. And when their 
politeness failed, he sat with his head 
tilted skyward, scanning the air for a 
balloon, which he said was to contain 
his managing editor and the managing 
editor's camera. When, with the ap- 
proach of the procession, this finally 
came into view, his sense of assisting 

i65 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

at a great occasion seemed complete. 
He traced the balloon's evolutions 
with garrulous enthusiasm, mingling 
his rhapsodies on American enterprise, 
and on this particular scoop in pho- 
tography, with cryptic phrases that 
sounded like titles for the pictures and 
headlines for a story he would write to 
accompany them. 

How Emerson would have enjoyed 
pointing to this man as an example of 
the uselessness of travel ! But Emerson 
took no account of the pleasure to be 
found in merely being, for an hour, part 
of a great show. Think of the joy, to 
a Pussy-cat traveler, of talking about 
home, and one's self, at a king's funeral! 
— to say nothing of the joy of talking 
about one's self, and a king's funeral, 
at home ! 

As a matter of fact, in spite of Emer- 

166 



PUSSY-GAT, PUSSY-GAT 

son, what a man gets from travel is not 
what he takes to it. The real measure 
of a journey's worth is not even what 
he is able to report in the autobio- 
graphic accounts of his journey while 
his memory of it is still vividly sharp. 
From my stay-at-home point of view, 
at least, the test is the social one of 
conversation. What is the returned 
traveler able to add to the interest of an 
hour of talk? Anecdote, allusion, and 
stray reference can dampen the spirits 
of a group into flabby conventionalism. 
Or they can fire the imagination, set 
wits a-play, and stretch a bond of com- 
mon feeling between strangers. Let 
me have no Pussy-cat talk around my 
fire! 




XI 

Ragbags and Relics 

here is an attic in our house. 
With no feeling of conde- 
scension toward those who 
have none, still less of envy 
toward those who boast a bigger one, I 
may say that we are proud of our pos- 
session. It is a real attic, not a locker 
in the basement, nor a storeroom on 
the top floor. Its rafters show, the 
chimneys climb up to the roof in struc- 
tural frankness, its corners are dim, and 
a slender chink or two in the wall lets 
streaks of unaccountable sunshine fall 
across the floor. 

Its interest for us does not lie in the 
romantic or mysterious relics of past 
generations, for none are there. In fact, 

168 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

we like it all the better that its con- 
tents have found their way to this asy- 
lum within our own memory. Exter- 
nally it is quite commonplace, hardly 
worth a second visit to any one but our- 
selves. But to us its charm is perennial 
and thrilling. Crippled chairs and ta- 
bles that have witnessed many an im- 
portant interview are its furniture; its 
decorations, pictures that we no longer 
like to look at and keepsakes of forgot- 
ten significance, not to speak of broken 
vases, cupless saucers, and what was 
flatteringly known as bric-a-brac; its 
treasure, all manner of things that we 
don't want, but would n't think of 
throwing away. 

From nails here and there dangle 
heavy ghostly-looking bags, and droop- 
ing garments that flutter in the draft. 
Rows of boxes, chests, and trunks stand 
169 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

under the eaves, gathering dust unhin- 
dered from spring until fall and from 
fall until spring again. A saddle pic- 
turesquely strides a beam in one dim 
corner; in another leans a guitar whose 
remnants of strings murmur plaintively 
when any one passes it by. A pile of 
old hats, a row of worn-out shoes, end- 
ing with some very small ones much 
stubbed at the toes, a big dog-collar 
hanging on a peg, are informal remind- 
ers of every member of the family. 

And all about, lying along the beams 
and standing in corners and piled on 
tables, are the implements of our dis- 
carded hobbies. These are our mis- 
takes. Fishing-rod, reel, and gun 
standing together, have a decidedly 
fresh and unworn look. The kit of py- 
rographic tools is as tidy as if it had just 
been bought; and the very professional- 
170 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

looking palette has quite too clean a 
middle surface, and too exact a distrib- 
ution of little dabs of color to have as- 
sisted at the making of many pictures. 
Perhaps the most amusing of the new- 
old cast-offs is a particularly shining 
set of golf clubs in a much-bestrapped 
and plaided bag. It brings up vi- 
sions of the gay sweaters and dashing 
hats that accompanied them in their 
brief career. The fascination of a game, 
to the lively cousin who abandoned 
these here, lay in bringing together a 
perfect equipment for it, with espe- 
cially serious regard for the appropriate- 
ness and becomingness of the clothes. 

Our mistakes may have served at 
least a part of their purpose of provid- 
ing us recreation, in the leisurely busi- 
ness of acquiring the paraphernalia. 
With what zest we examined cata- 
171 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

logues, discussed makes and prices ; with 
what humility we sought the advice of 
enthusiasts ! 

Two companionable hobbies, whose 
untidiness denies them a place else- 
where, are actually practiced in our at- 
tic. In one corner, near the window 
with the best view, hangs a bulky rag- 
bag. An old rocking-chair and a sewing- 
basket stand conveniently near; and a 
heap of bright-colored balls of rags lies 
on the floor. The work of sewing strips 
for rag rugs is always waiting, but 
never hurried. At the other side of the 
attic, beneath the window with the best 
light, stands the business-like work- 
bench where the craft of wood-carv- 
ing goes on intermittently. It is also 
the family carpenter-shop. Everything 
that needs a touch of glue or paint, or 
a few nails, or a polishing, is set down 
172 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

in insinuating proximity to the bench. 
Sometimes they wait long for their 
turn; some things, indeed, have never 
got downstairs again, but have taken 
on the crestfallen air of permanent 
cast-offs. 

To the casual view, one attic is very 
much like another. We all pursue our 
careers with the same utensils; and so 
they have a generic similarity, wher- 
ever we see them. But for all that, 
every attic is a family diary, a biograph- 
ical record written in things instead of 
words. With unconscious complete- 
ness we give ourselves away, telling 
what we looked like, what we have 
played with, and what our tastes are. 

The record is not so faint, either, as 
you might think; for relics that attain 
the dubious immortality of the attic 
have weathered through the discussions 

i 7 3 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

and compromises of more than one 
cleaning season. What to keep, and 
what to stow into the ever-hungry Sal- 
vation Army wagon, with haste lest we 
repent before we fairly get it off our 
hands, is a question that renews itself 
every spring. Only those things sur- 
vive that express the strongest prefer- 
ences of their owners, or the greatest 
intrinsic value. 

Naturally, no two agree as to what 
that value is. One person's trash is 
another's treasure. One, for example, 
cherishes souvenirs, and another his 
case of minerals and birds' eggs. What 
interest can Caroline's collection of old 
hats have to Henry, who covets the 
space they take up for his newspaper 
files? These he thinks he may want to 
refer to, some day; and he is sure be- 
sides he can sell them at a round price 
174 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

in the course of a generation or two. 
Yet to Caroline the papers are simply 
dust-gatherers, while her hats are in- 
valuable as types, if not as evidence of 
her youthful attractiveness ; as well as 
giving a jog to her memory of incidents 
both humorous and sentimental. If the 
hats have not given way to the news- 
paper files, it is because something else 
less precious has been mutually con- 
ceded. 

There are a few hours in the year 
when the housekeeper wishes for more 
agreements and fewer compromises on 
throwing away. Those are the hours 
when, after further postponement has 
become impossible, she takes up her 
dusters and focuses her attention upon 
the attic treasures. At other times, she 
accepts the valuation put upon them 
by their former owners. She may even 
175 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

value them more; for they somehow 
help her to understand her household 
as a family community, with individ- 
ual traits that supplement, correct, and 
strengthen one another. But under the 
momentary stress of dusting, sorting, 
and rearranging, she would almost let 
the accumulations of years go without 
a pang. Losing her interest in them as 
relics, and her faith in their possibili- 
ties of usefulness, she measures their 
value upon a basis of the space they 
take up and the dust they gather. With 
energetic murmurs that "this is merely 
taking up room" and "that is full of 
dust," she does dispose of enough to 
make room for the new consignments 
of the season; wondering nevertheless 
why people keep so many things. 

The real reason for the attic, how- 
ever, lies deeper than the super-sensible 
176 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

person who has dispensed with hers 
ever bothers to look, in a common im- 
pulse of our human nature. Some 
housewives call it thrift to hoard their 
cast-off possessions; some save them 
out of sentiment; and many save in- 
stinctively without trying to explain it. 
But at the bottom of all saving, I am 
sure, is a feeling of loyalty to the things 
themselves. Old clothes, old furniture, 
old utensils, have come with time to 
have a response for our moods; and 
when we can no longer use them, we 
prefer to put them away rather than 
throw them away. 

The housekeeper combines with her 
sentiment a more practical motive. 
She finds a pleasure of possession in con- 
templating her salvage quite as keen 
as that she feels in acquiring new and 
unworn equipment. These are her re- 
177 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

sources against a rainy day; her an- 
swers to whatever hypothetical needs 
may arise. With these at her back, she 
will never be asked in vain for all man- 
ner of strange supplies, that their own- 
ers had blithely thrown out and forgot- 
ten, when the first need for them was 
past. Here is her wherewithal to re- 
place broken parts of things, to match 
and patch torn clothing, to fit out ex- 
peditions upon unaccustomed adven- 
ture. 

We have all had experience of this 
motherly thrift. The hidden stores of 
the attic have been made to yield, upon 
demand, everything from a masquerade 
costume to the lid for a kitchen teapot; 
with a bit of history for each, to en- 
hance our pleasure in its use. 

Yet sometimes things do not look 
quite as we had remembered them. Can 
i 7 8 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

it be that the saddle was so cumber- 
some when it was put away, the bath- 
ing-suit so awkward? Occasionally we 
are disappointed not so much by the 
looks of our implements as by a subtle 
deterioration in their quality, from 
standing long unused. Perhaps we 
have here the reason why so many 
things that are sent to the attic tem- 
porarily never come back. They ac- 
quire a down-at-the-heel expression in 
that depository of hopes deferred, the 
submissive and dejected mien of things 
that have seen better days. 

So they take their place in the 
grown-ups' playhouse, where wonder- 
ful repairs are still possible, if only 
time were no object, and where im- 
agination finds other uses for them 
than those intended in their creation. 
Fancy dallies with the makeshifts of 
179 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

pioneers, and the inventions of the 
Swiss Family Robinson. We would 
rejoice to share the fate of Crusoe 
if we could have the contents of the 
attic on the island with us! 

Keeping mementoes is a habit we 
usually ascribe to young people; but 
a good many go on with it all their 
lives. There is a precision about it 
that is pleasing to the methodical — 
satisfying their impulse to classify, la- 
bel, and tie up in packages. But the 
keepsakes never were worth the trouble ; 
they never had anything to recommend 
them but association, and that is dim- 
med by time. After a few years in the 
attic they become simply so many 
unrecognizable trifles, faded and brit- 
tle, whose only effect on the beholder 
is to make him sneeze. They are re- 
minders of nothing, now; the episodes 

180 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

they commemorate can scarcely be re- 
called, even with the aid of labels 
and names. Good wine needs no bush, 
and great events no mementoes ! 

Yet we are loyal to our younger and 
more foolish selves. If we smile at their 
forgotten ecstasies, it is with the affec- 
tionate indulgence we might give to the 
raptures and tragedies of a child. Be- 
cause our dried flowers and crumpled 
dance orders for a time revived in us a 
thrill of emotion, we hate to say the 
word that will destroy them ; though we 
should probably never know the differ- 
ence if some one else would only dare to 
dispose of them without asking leave. 

I have no claim to being methodical, 
myself; but I used to put away for safe 
keeping and future reference such things 
as theater programs and art catalogues. 
However, I long ago discovered that 

181 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

they were no aid to my memory, be- 
cause they were never accessible when 
I needed them ; and that the affairs they 
recorded were of no great importance 
after all. So I heroically burned them, 
box, pack, and bundle. 

Old letters we cling to, so long as we 
have attics. They remain fresh and 
vivid even through the lapse of years, 
evoking visions of their writers that 
give keen pleasure. This must be be- 
cause people write their letters of friend- 
ship in their best moods, at moments 
of heightened power or sympathy or 
merriment. These are the true relics. 

The ragbag is another family collec- 
tion for which I have an immense re- 
spect. This is a feminine treasure. 
From its bulky depths can be conjured 
a portrait, a theme for a story, or the 
material for homely miracles in needle- 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

work. There is always a little excite- 
ment in opening it and turning out the 
contents ; for a new roll of pieces always 
comes out on top, and a new anecdote. 
It is a sociable task, requiring at least 
two persons to enjoy it properly. 

I remember one character sketch 
that never failed to interest me. It was 
inspired by a roll of French cambric, 
printed with a great variety of tiny hu- 
man figures, in lively action, — dancing, 
riding, shooting, bowing. This tiny roll 
was all that was left of a shirt, bought 
long ago in Paris by a cousin who was 
an inveterate wanderer. During one of 
his unheralded visits he had left with 
his aunt the gay garment, saying he had 
thought of her quilting when he bought 
it. He disappeared from the family 
news long before I came into it ; but we 
never tire of hearing about him. 

1 83 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

When the ragbag used to blossom 
into a quilt, the portraits and stories 
were all spread out for the fancy to 
play with, the quilt itself being no mean 
picture for the eye. There is some ro- 
mance about going to sleep under a 
family quilt ! 

Quilting is not, indeed, one of the 
industries whose passing we most re- 
gret ; we could hardly expect ourselves, 
with all we can find in the way of occu- 
pation for hands and head, to keep up 
the tradition of it, since we can be 
much better employed. Nevertheless, 
I sometimes wish I had a year of un- 
bounded leisure, so that I could try my 
hand at it. 

Not all the relics are in the attic. 

Some that properly belong there are 

boastingly displayed to chance callers. 

The relics of the great, their pens and 

18/1 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

buttons and spectacle cases, do not as a 
rule afford much pleasure to any one 
but the possessor. And no one else is 
greatly edified by the sight of a bit of 
lava from Vesuvius, or a splinter of 
marble from the Forum, or a leaf from 
the tomb of Keats. Even he can do noth- 
ing with them after he has got them 
but put them in a case like so many 
specimens, and gloat upon them. He 
is lucky if his friends do not carefully 
avoid the corner where they are kept. 
The best souvenirs are those which 
serve a double purpose. If, in addition 
to the charm of a story attached to 
them, or an adventure in obtaining 
them, they can take their place among 
the utensils and ornaments of daily life, 
they are altogether treasures. They 
enrich with their history the pleasant 
sense of living among friendly things. 

i85 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

I could never be happy without an 
attic; but to my constant amazement, 
those who have none at all seem to get 
on very well. They are quite con- 
tented without an aureola of worn-out 
possessions. Sentiment for things has 
no part in their cheerful scheme of liv- 
ing. The superior compactness, con- 
venience, and service of their chosen 
abodes are worth all they have to sac- 
rifice in wealth of associations. But I 
suspect them of having an attic, or a 
substitute for it, somewhere in the 
background. It may be borrowed or 
rented, or it may be a trunk or a little 
box. They take care that it gives them 
no trouble; but they would hardly be 
human if they did not prize some things 
that had no market value. 

You may have a home without an 
attic, but you cannot have a house 

186 



RAGBAGS AND RELICS 

without one. The attic may be a mat- 
ter of habit ; it certainly is one of sen- 
timent. It is our energetic protest 
against the greedy doctrine of efficiency, 
which would make excellent machines 
of us all. The house is not a shelter, nor 
an office, nor an abode, nor even a home 
merely. It is the dwelling-place of souls. 
By all means let us keep our attics, and 
store them well with things which it 
will give us peace and laughter to con- 
template. 




XII 

On Being a Hostess 

ousin Jane is a hostess of 
the old-fashioned sort. When 
she entertains, she scorns the 
easy club-meeting, the rapid- 
fire tea, and all parties with a foreor- 
dained program of amusements, like 
cards. Much to her daughter Sally's 
chagrin, she sticks to dinner-parties and 
evening receptions as her contribution 
to the social life of the town. 

"If people can't talk, or won't, they 
need n't come to my parties," she is in 
the habit of saying. " Such people are a 
bother. Conversation is the only proper 
reason for going to a party." 

Yet she does not object to amuse- 
ments that are incidental ; even to cards 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

and dancing, unless these reduce other 
guests, less frivolously inclined, to the 
position of mere spectators. And she 
actually courts an excuse, in the way of 
music, or a "lion," or even a lecture, 
provided it is not too pretentious and 
the subject is not commonplace, to give 
direction to the conversation. For as 
a hostess she is a bit of a despot. She 
arranges her guests arbitrarily and 
moves individuals from one group to 
another with summary swiftness, if her 
keen instinct detects anything wrong, 
like incipient boredom or antagonism; 
or even that one corner of the room is 
gay at the expense of dullness elsewhere. 
With all her watchfulness, however, 
she so frankly enjoys her guests that 
they cannot help enjoying themselves; 
and so her parties, despite Sally's pro- 
tests at their formality, are always sue- 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

cessful. Even Sally's lively young 
friends, who regard with suspicion af- 
fairs with so large a preponderance of 
chaperons, are surprised into having a 
good time; for they find the formality 
itself gives a welcome to their youthful 
exuberance of spirits, and an opportun- 
ity for their play of wit, which per- 
suade them that they are really of some 
account in a grown-up world. 

I believe that Cousin Jane enjoys 
having parties because they are purely 
ornamental and unnecessary. She says 
they are a relief from being useful. But 
also, and this is a reason she does not 
admit, she likes to entertain because 
of the excitement of it. She can focus 
upon a party all the feminine activities 
she delights in, and in their pleasantest 
phases. Preparing for it is a house- 
wifely dissipation; she diverts daily 
190 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

tasks from the path of utilitarian rou- 
tine, and turns them to purposes of 
pleasure. She sets her house in order, 
and then adds the extra touch upon it 
that gives it a festive and welcoming air. 
In planning her feast, she neglects for 
the time her everyday standards of 
nourishment, for the appeal to the eye 
and the palate. 

Also, she admits that she likes an oc- 
casion now and then to manage her 
friends a bit, for their own good. 

"They don't mind it," she explained 
to me once; "in fact, they like to be ex- 
tracted from unpleasant situations and 
fitted into pleasant ones. The talker 
wants nothing better than to have a 
pair of ears for a neighbor; and some 
one who 'wants to know' is happy to 
be the listener. I 've seen the most un- 
communicative man telling his secrets 
191 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

to a sympathetic friend of an hour's 
standing; and I 've known the most ob- 
stinate to be as docile as a lamb when I 
hinted that a little attention from him 
would make a neglected one happy." 

I was in the position of the lady who 
wants to know; and I demanded fur- 
ther elucidation, one afternoon when 
she had brought her sewing-bag and 
come to sit with me. Cousin Jane is no 
needlewoman by habit; the same ra- 
ther extensive piece of embroidery has 
served her for years, as a background 
for informal visits with her friends. She 
carries it to save them embarrassment, 
she says; for if she has her work, they 
can sew or knit with a clear conscience, 
and let her talk. I knitted, pausing to 
pick up her spool or her scissors now 
and then, and to urge her on. 

"If, as you implied yesterday," I be- 
192 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

gan, "you offset your brilliant people 
with dull, I should think you 'd strike a 
deadly average of mediocrity." 

"It does seem so," she answered; 
"except that you never can tell who is 
going to turn out unexpectedly bril- 
liant." 

"You know all about it in a family 
affair," I interrupted her. "Or in those 
too, too intimate groups, where the 
people know one another so well that 
you can almost predict what will be 
said. When I am rash enough to have 
a party of that sort, I find the only 
thing to do is to place the people who 
were never known to agree, so far apart 
that they can't possibly disagree, and 
then leave them alone. They are sure 
to have a good time ; but they have no 
surprises for you." 

"On the other hand," said Cousin 
193 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

Jane, trying to find her needle, "put 
one or two strangers in a group of famil- 
iars, and you find every individual be- 
coming a stranger, with traits quite 
new to you." 

"I've had that experience myself," 
I objected, "and always found it rather 
risky." 

"That's part of the game," retorted 
Cousin Jane. "Those who have n't 
the sporting instinct won't find much 
fun in entertaining. Nothing is more 
plainly a game of chance. People are so 
various. We are like chameleons, with 
a different set of colorings, in the way 
of enthusiasms and prejudices, for 
every one we meet. And when a dozen, 
or a hundred, of those prejudices and 
enthusiasms come together, anything 
might happen! Guests are simply so 
many possibilities. A hostess makes 
194 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

combinations that seem to promise 
well, and then watches the reactions, 
and changes her groups at the first indi- 
cation of anything wrong. I 've had to 
rearrange a dinner-table at the last 
minute, from little signs I caught while 
we were waiting." 

I accused Cousin Jane of being a psy- 
chologist; but she disclaimed any such 
ambition. 

" It 's merely common sense ! " she as- 
serted. "What people say is so small a 
part of what they are, that we have to 
find out about them for ourselves; we 
treat them on the basis of our discov- 
eries, rather than of any information 
they give us. It's the method women 
have always used." 

At the moment I could no more than 
smile abstractedly, being rather busy 
with binding off. When I spoke, it was 

iq5 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

in response to a query that had sprung 
up in my own mind. 

"After all," I reflected, "I can't see 
that being a hostess means anything 
very different than I used to think, 
when I considered her chief function 
was to provide all the awkward youths 
and uninteresting girls with partners. 
It really is her hospitable task to bring 
the solemn ones out of their corners, 
and set them a-smiling; and to induce 
the cheerful monologuist, without hurt- 
ing his feelings, to give the others a 
chance to talk. Besides that, while keep- 
ing herself quite detached, she apolo- 
gizes for the peculiarities of her friends, 
explains away their little stupidities, 
and smooths out their little tempers. 
She is only a kind of social go-between." 

"I don't object to being a go-be- 
tween," said Cousin Jane, "if you let 
196 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

me do the things you mention, and one 
or two more. I like having a finger in 
their little pies ! I like the game of mak- 
ing people get on together when they 
have privately determined not to ! And 
I enjoy placing two contrasting temper- 
aments side by side, just as I would 
blending colors. I 'm not so sure of my 
results, however. For example Judge 
Wells gave me a surprise, the other 
evening. You know how much he and 
Mrs. Dayton have worked together in 
civic and charitable affairs? And how 
far he would be from admiring Alice 
Wetherall's type? Well, I positively 
had to rescue Mrs. Dayton from him, 
surprised and quite indignant. It ap- 
peared he had flatly contradicted every 
opinion she expressed, and then yawned 
at her! For revenge, I casually dropped 
Alice Wetherall at his side. I hardly 
197 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

dared to look back, but when I did, 
there they were, enjoying themselves 
hugely ; and he was in his most charm- 
ing humor when I tore him away, half 
an hour later!" 

"The trouble was n't so much with 
Judge Wells, as with Mrs. Dayton," I 
ventured. "He was there to be amused 
and it took a sense of the frivolity of 
life to do it. Mrs. Dayton is fine, I ad- 
mit; but she has too much conscience 
to be amusing." 

"Mrs. Dayton is an admirable din- 
ner-guest, on the other hand," said 
Cousin Jane. " She acts as a balance, 
if the talk becomes too flighty, to bring 
it back to a safe level. When a topic 
threatens danger, I toss it to her. I can 
count on her, every time, to find some- 
thing sane and clever to say, which 
will start them all off again on fresh 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

subjects. Dinner hostesses could n't 
get on without the Mrs. Daytons." 

"You're a terrible little tyrant," said 
I, "sitting up there at the head of your 
table, Cousin Jane! You know you 
are! You put in a modest word here, 
and a mild question there; and we all 
think, what a pleasant party, and how 
witty or wise every one is ; and we sup- 
pose it is due to us. But all the time you 
sit there and boss us ! You are the in- 
terlocutor," I added rather maliciously, 
"and of course Cousin John is 'bones.' 
I confess I like your shows, though." 

"And I don't mind your names," re- 
turned Cousin Jane, not in the least 
disturbed. "Everything is more or less 
of a show, — don't you think? — that 
has a touch of art about it." 

"But not all shows are art," said I, 
" club meetings for instance. I have 
199 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

always thought those were rather hard 
on the hostess. She has to spend as 
much energy getting ready for one as 
for a real party; yet she can't lift a fin- 
ger to save her guests from boring one 
another to death ! She makes her house 
immaculate, and offers the latest thing 
in decorations, prizes and dainties; and 
then, having said how-do-you-do, she 
relapses into a mere member, with no 
responsibility, and what is worse, no 
power. The game or program goes on 
automatically ; and she might better be 
somewhere else, really enj oying herself ." 

"You need n't tell me anything 
about clubs!" exclaimed Cousin Jane, 
with energy. "Did n't Sally 'have' her 
art club, the other day?" 

"Did it go off well?" I inquired idly. 
Having said my say about clubs, I was 
not much exercised about Sally's. 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

"Sally thought it did; but that's the 
worst of it. I 'm ashamed of her satis- 
faction with it!" 

"I suppose it all depended upon who 
gave the paper," said I. "I always try 
to choose the most promising program 
of the winter, for my meeting." 

"Sally wasn't so wise; she chose a 
convenient date. I don't go to clubs 
often; so I was as exasperated as you 
can imagine with the whole perform- 
ance. To begin with, the paper was 
mumbled, rather than read. It may 
have been very good, but nobody 
around me knew it ! Of course, being a 
hostess, ex-officio, I sat in the hall; and 
the reader's voice had to turn two cor- 
ners to reach us. Then they had a dis- 
cussion, though why they call it that, 
I can't see! It consisted of two other 
short papers on the main subject, also 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

mumbled. You could hear the sigh of 
relief when they were finished; but 
there was applause, just the same. Does 
anything sound more half-hearted than 
that pitter-patter of kid gloves?" 

I saw that Cousin Jane was really 
roused. Her hospitable pride had been 
touched. 

"But they usually talk at tea?" I 
submitted. 

"They did! Their tongues were 
loosed upon every subject but that of 
the day's meeting. They talked about 
clothes, and people, and appointments. 
But 'How's your mother?' and 'So 
sorry I missed you ! ' are not conversa- 
tion. It costs time and intellectual ex- 
ertion merely to establish conversation, 
let alone carry it on! And, to all ap- 
pearances, those were the two things 
nobody had to spare. I was as unimag- 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

inative as any of them. I went around 
being sorry I 'd missed them and affably 
inquiring after mothers, till I ticked it 
out like an adding machine. I told 
Sally afterward, that if they thought 
there was any real sociability in that 
kind of affair, they were greatly mis- 
taken. They were all trying to shirk a 
social duty, and to enjoy themselves 
without any effort." 

"You put sociability on a pretty 
high level, Cousin Jane," said I, striv- 
ing to detain her as she rose to go. 

Now, Cousin Jane is not one to pro- 
long a visit with her hand on the door- 
knob. One leave-taking is enough for 
her. With her customary decision she 
gathered up her belongings. 

"Human sociability ought to be 
somewhat more intelligent than farm- 
yard chatter; don't you think so?" she 

2o3 



SPEAKING OF HOME 

asked, laughing. "The sociability that 
is a mere exchange of facts, or worries, 
or complaints, of — worst of all — of 
jokes, will doubtless continue to be 
popular without my aid. Give me a 
few choice spirits exchanging thoughts, 
or beliefs, or theories, or whimsicalities, 
or even differences of opinion, and I am 
satisfied with my party. But one never 
comes to the end of theorizing! I may 
as well leave off now, as half an hour 
later. Good-bye; and remember, you 
are coming to dinner to-morrow." 

I thought admiringly of Cousin 
Jane's tact as hostess. She is the corol- 
lary of her own theory. Conversation 
such as she talks of, does not bloom in a 
desert, nor in a swamp, nor on a storm- 
swept hillside. It is a flower of a shel- 
tered and a sunlit atmosphere, the ex- 
pression of minds happy and at ease. 

204 



ON BEING A HOSTESS 

To make the world of the hour a bright 
and pleasant place, where only the good 
can enter, and where no one need dis- 
trust himself or be niggardly of his 
gifts — that is the essence of a wom- 
an's hospitality, as Cousin Jane prac- 
tices it. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



